→Drought stabilising?: "Drought stabilising?" |
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*There aren't too few crats, there are too many, with nothing much to do to keep their interest piqued. I propose pimping them out to other WMF projects for some badly needed cash for en.wiki admins to share (suck it, non-admins, it's all mine MINE <big>MINE</big>). --[[User:Floquenbeam|Floquenbeam]] ([[User talk:Floquenbeam|talk]]) 18:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC) |
*There aren't too few crats, there are too many, with nothing much to do to keep their interest piqued. I propose pimping them out to other WMF projects for some badly needed cash for en.wiki admins to share (suck it, non-admins, it's all mine MINE <big>MINE</big>). --[[User:Floquenbeam|Floquenbeam]] ([[User talk:Floquenbeam|talk]]) 18:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC) |
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:*Kind of like a foreign exchange program, except with bureaucrats instead of students, eh? [[User:AutomaticStrikeout|Automatic]]''[[User talk:AutomaticStrikeout|Strikeout]]'' <small>([[Special:Contributions/AutomaticStrikeout|₵]])</small> 20:12, 22 August 2013 (UTC) |
:*Kind of like a foreign exchange program, except with bureaucrats instead of students, eh? [[User:AutomaticStrikeout|Automatic]]''[[User talk:AutomaticStrikeout|Strikeout]]'' <small>([[Special:Contributions/AutomaticStrikeout|₵]])</small> 20:12, 22 August 2013 (UTC) |
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== Withdraw RFA == |
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Someone can close my RFA. No reason to waste more time on a lost cause. [[User:KumiokoCleanStart|Kumioko]] ([[User talk:KumiokoCleanStart|talk]]) 03:15, 27 August 2013 (UTC) |
Revision as of 03:15, 27 August 2013
No RfXs since 12:38, 30 April 2024 (UTC).—cyberbot ITalk to my owner:Online |
Candidate | Type | Result | Date of close | Tally | |||
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S | O | N | % | ||||
ToadetteEdit | RfA | Closed per WP:NOTNOW | 30 Apr 2024 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Sdkb | RfA | Successful | 16 Feb 2024 | 265 | 2 | 0 | 99 |
The Night Watch | RfA | Successful | 11 Feb 2024 | 215 | 63 | 13 | 77 |
Current time: 00:55:12, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
2003 · 2004 · 2005 · 2006 · 2007 · 2008 · 2009 · 2010 · 2011 · 2012 · 2013
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This page has archives. Sections older than 10 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
Drought stabilising?
For the last five years RFA has been going through a drought, with each year from 2008 to 2012 seeing between half and two thirds as many admins appointed as the year before. But finally in 2013 it seems to be bottoming out - so far this year we have 24 new admins compared to 28 last year, and there are five months yet to come.
Year | Month | Mean | Passes | Fails[N 1] | RfAs[N 2] | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |||||
2024 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 6 | ||||||||
2023 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 12 | 7 | 19 |
2022 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1.2 | 14 | 6 | 20 |
2021 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.6 | 7 | 4 | 11 |
2020 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1.4 | 17 | 8 | 25 |
2019 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1.8 | 22 | 9 | 31 |
2018 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0.8 | 10 | 8 | 18 |
2017 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1.8 | 21 | 20 | 41 |
2016 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1.3 | 16 | 20 | 36 |
2015 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1.8 | 21 | 32 | 53 |
2014 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 1.8 | 22 | 38 | 60 |
2013 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2.8 | 34 | 39 | 73 |
2012 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 2.3 | 28 | 64 | 92 |
2011 | 3 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 4.3 | 52 | 87 | 139 |
2010 | 6 | 7 | 2 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 7 | 13 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 1 | 6.3 | 75 | 155 | 230 |
2009 | 6 | 9 | 13 | 14 | 12 | 12 | 10 | 11 | 8 | 7 | 13 | 6 | 10.1 | 121 | 234 | 355 |
2008 | 36 | 27 | 22 | 12 | 16 | 18 | 16 | 12 | 6 | 16 | 11 | 9 | 16.8 | 201 | 392 | 593 |
2007 | 23 | 35 | 31 | 30 | 54 | 35 | 31 | 18 | 34 | 27 | 56 | 34 | 34.0 | 408 | 512 | 920 |
2006 | 44 | 28 | 34 | 36 | 30 | 28 | 26 | 26 | 22 | 27 | 33 | 19 | 29.5 | 353 | 543 | 896 |
2005 | 14 | 9 | 16 | 25 | 17 | 28 | 31 | 39 | 32 | 67 | 41 | 68 | 32.3 | 387 | 213 | 600 |
2004 | 13 | 14 | 31 | 20 | 23 | 13 | 17 | 12 | 29 | 16 | 27 | 25 | 20.0 | 240 | 63 | 303 |
2003 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 6 | 10 | 24 | 11 | 9 | 17 | 10 | 9 | 15 | 10.3 | 123 | n/a[N 3] | 123 |
2002 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 3.7 | 44 | n/a[N 3] | 44 | ||||||
Totals | 2233 | 2454 | 4687[N 5] |
Key | |
---|---|
0 successful RFAs
|
26–30 successful RFAs
|
1–5 successful RFAs
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31–35 successful RFAs
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6–10 successful RFAs
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36–40 successful RFAs
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11–15 successful RFAs
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41–50 successful RFAs
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16–20 successful RFAs
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51–60 successful RFAs
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21–25 successful RFAs
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More than 60 successful RFAs
|
- Notes
- Early 2003 from User:NoSeptember/RfA_chronological
- Notes
- ^ Online only. By 2015 admins had started deleting "NotNow" RFAs which artificially reduces the unsuccessful figure
- ^ Except unsuccessful ones by email.
- ^ a b Early RFAs were done by email and only the successes are known
- ^ 33 had been appointed in early 2002
- ^ Figures for unsuccessfuls for 2002 to 2003 are not available
- References
- See also
- Wikipedia:Desysoppings by month - similar list but for number of desysops per month
Of course these numbers are insufficient to maintain our current admin cadre, let alone appoint enough to tackle the consequences of the drought such as the wikigeneration gulf between the existing admins who mostly started editing before 2007 and the very large part of the community who only became active in the last five years or so. Nor does stabilising imply that the underlying problems are being solved, we are still seeing inflation of arbitrary criteria such as edit count and tenure, with the fear that people are judging candidates by things that are easily measured rather than properly checking their edits to see whether or not they'd actually make good admins. But after years of measuring an ever deteriorating situation I'm delighted to be able to announce some good news on this page. ϢereSpielChequers 08:00, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- It seems that this year there have been several desysops and/or admins voluntarily handing in the bit. There may also be admins who have simply stopped editing this year and gone unnoticed. Ignoring the number of admins who have had the flag removed for inactivity, I wonder what the actual net result is and whether this year's promotions are actually covering the year's attrition of active admins. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:50, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
Yes I've got some stats on that as well:
- Admin attrition
Year | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Inactive or desysopped (net) | n/a | 24[1] | 22 | 25 | 96 | 382 | 263 | 194 | 179 | |||||||||||||
Inactive or desysopped% | n/a | 14%[2] | 6% | 3% | 9% | 28% | 22% | 18% | 21% | |||||||||||||
Change (net)% | n/a | 151.7% | 100.6% | 35.6% | 2.7% | -6.2% | -7.7% | -12% | ||||||||||||||
"Semi-active" admins >=1 edit in last 90 days but < 30 edits in last 60 days [3] | n/a | 283 | 421 | 496 | 543 | 519 | 571 | 555 | 539 | 482 | ||||||||||||
Inactive admins [4] | n/a | 439 | ||||||||||||||||||||
"Active" admins at end of year (EOY) 30 edits or more in last 60 days [5] | n/a | 143 | 360 | 722 | 979 | 1,005 | 943 | 870 | 766 | 744 | 674 | 633 | 585 | 582 | 541 | 543 | 514 | 499 | 511 | 470 | 495 |
NB. Active admins from User:NoSeptember/Admin stats and Revision history of Wikipedia:List of administrators
- ^ Over three years not one
- ^ Over three years not one
- ^ semi-active admins first calculated as 198 on 8/6/2007
- ^ Admins with no edits in last 90 days = admins - semi-active admins - "active" admins
- ^ active admins peaked at 1021 on 28/2/2008
The number of "active" admins is still falling and despite two dozen new admins being appointed this year it has dropped by slightly more than two dozen since the end of December. Though arguably things would look very different if "active" was relabelled as has edited in last 30 days >30 edits in last 60 days and we had a number of tighter definitions, including has used the admin tools in the last 30 days and even a "very active" for any admin who is active on wikipedia for an evening a week or more. ϢereSpielChequers 12:19, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks WSC. That's exactly what I wanted to know. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:25, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- I think these numbers are also a little misleading because there has been a lot of discussions about adminship and RFA's that IMO generated interest. I do think its likely we haven't hit bottom quite yet and this may just be an outlier but its still a problem that needs to continue to be addressed. My fear is that the community will continue to torpedo good initiatives for changes to the RFA system until its too late for things to be fixed and we have to do something drastic at the last minute and the problem is irreversible. Also, although there are quite a few editors with the tools, most don't use them or use them rarely so its the same handful of people doing the admin stuff. In many instances its because the people who are "trusted" enough to get the tools lacks the technical or functional ability to use them. This is another problem that needs to be addressed. Lastly and possibly most importantly, a lot of admins violate the rules in the conduct of their "duties" but are allowed to keep the tools. In some cases these problems are the same things that would prevent a user from getting the tools in the first place. If the problem is bad enough to prevent an editor from getting access to the toolset, then it should be removed and the editor should have to rerun. We shouldn't give them unlimited latitude once they get the tools and then not allow someone to have them because of the same problem. Kumioko (talk) 13:42, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- Hi Kumioko, yes discussion about RFA sometimes prompts people to run, and signpost articles in particular usually result in a bit of a spike. My intention is to make at least one such spike a year, this year has already had its spike, but it wasn't any bigger than we've seen in the last few years. So it is quite possible that the next five months could see rather fewer admins than one would predict by extrapolation from the last 7 months. But in saying that in 2013 the year on year decline has finally bottomed out I am not relying on a single RFA succeeding in the next five months. Though if just five do then 2013 will actually produce more admins than 2012.
- As to your other questions, yes in terms of whether we can keep this site running this way we need to focus on the number of admins we have, and we really ought to measure level of admin coverage available. 50 full time admins working a shift pattern would ensure that we always had half a dozen around and at busy times at least a dozen. But we depend on volunteers who choose their hours and might only donate an hour of their time in 6 months. That makes for a difficult thing to measure. None of the people who seem to want admins to be a scarce resource also seem to be willing to try and calculate how many admins we actually need. I'm very much in the camp of thinking that all civil sensible long term editors should be admins, so to me the minimum number of admins we need is only relevant as part of a worst case scenario - at what point will there be a general enlistment of a posse of poorly vetted admins? Having the decline in the number of new admins bottom out doesn't stabilise the number of admins, but it does raise hope that things might be improving. However we'd have a very long way to go to get to the point where we had so many admins that being one was not a big deal, and we didn't need anyone to be just wielding the mop and not otherwise being part of the community. ϢereSpielChequers 21:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- I think some of that will help but I don't think that causing spikes in the RFA's is a good long term help to the process. I think its good of you to try and affect the number of admins but I think, perhaps naively, that we need to fix the process itself so we A) Get more people to attempt the process, B) we get more admins and C) we get more people with access to the tools needed to help keep this place running. Wikipedia needs people with access to the tools but we don't need them in one big group, we dont need the title of admin and we don't need all the beauracracy. As I and others have said before, we need to make it easy to get and easy to take away. Kumioko (talk) 01:26, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Actually, it's not as hard as it seems. This year, there have been more successful RfA than unsuccessful. The problem is getting people to run. AutomaticStrikeout ? 01:40, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I think some of that will help but I don't think that causing spikes in the RFA's is a good long term help to the process. I think its good of you to try and affect the number of admins but I think, perhaps naively, that we need to fix the process itself so we A) Get more people to attempt the process, B) we get more admins and C) we get more people with access to the tools needed to help keep this place running. Wikipedia needs people with access to the tools but we don't need them in one big group, we dont need the title of admin and we don't need all the beauracracy. As I and others have said before, we need to make it easy to get and easy to take away. Kumioko (talk) 01:26, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I think these numbers are also a little misleading because there has been a lot of discussions about adminship and RFA's that IMO generated interest. I do think its likely we haven't hit bottom quite yet and this may just be an outlier but its still a problem that needs to continue to be addressed. My fear is that the community will continue to torpedo good initiatives for changes to the RFA system until its too late for things to be fixed and we have to do something drastic at the last minute and the problem is irreversible. Also, although there are quite a few editors with the tools, most don't use them or use them rarely so its the same handful of people doing the admin stuff. In many instances its because the people who are "trusted" enough to get the tools lacks the technical or functional ability to use them. This is another problem that needs to be addressed. Lastly and possibly most importantly, a lot of admins violate the rules in the conduct of their "duties" but are allowed to keep the tools. In some cases these problems are the same things that would prevent a user from getting the tools in the first place. If the problem is bad enough to prevent an editor from getting access to the toolset, then it should be removed and the editor should have to rerun. We shouldn't give them unlimited latitude once they get the tools and then not allow someone to have them because of the same problem. Kumioko (talk) 13:42, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks WSC. That's exactly what I wanted to know. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:25, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- I draw two key conclusions - both optimistic which some may say just makes me a Polyanna. First, this year (thus far) is the first since the prehistory of 2005 when successful nominations have outnumbered unsuccessful ones. So maybe one thing that has changed recently is that fewer speculative, premature or joky nominations/self-noms are happening. Secondly, it may look like a problem that RfAs have gone down from 920 in 2007 to just 92 last year - a convenient 90% decrease. But the high water mark of active admins was just over 1,000 in that same year, 2007, and the total number has declined since then not by 90% but by about 33% (from 1,005 to 647). So the key figure is not the number of new admins we create, but the number still active and that's much less of a problem. I would myself make creating and removing admins a much easier and quicker process but given the tortuous history of RfA reform I don't have any good ideas about how that might be accomplished. But I think RfA reform is a less urgent problem than others have expressed, given that at present the numbers of admins usually seem sufficient to deal with the work on hand. Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 14:12, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- According to this link there are 1441 active admins (including beauracrats, bots and the like who have admin rights). Of those its the same 50 or less (mostly the same 20 or so) I see doing all the admin work and given the often long backlogs at many of the areas where admin rights are needed, I don't agree that the status quo is sufficient. Kumioko (talk) 14:31, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- That's partly right, Kumioko. It is indeed only around 20 or so (if that) who risk their Wiki lives and reputations by working in the drama areas without a Kevlar vest. Of course, in doing so, they are occasionally going to make the rare error of judgement, and unfortunately one wrong block or deletion brings an angry mob out in force yelling 'Desysop!' and calling for kangaroo justice. That said, I will agree that some admins have been less than mature with their use of the tools, but that is no reason to go on a rampage tarring all admins with the same brush and keeping hate lists per WP:POLEMIC.
- There is another group of admins however, whose names we hardely ever recognise: they are the ones who quietly work in the background closing uncontentious AfDs, doing page protections, deleting expired PRODs, and other technical tasks that require the bit for access. These may in fact be in the dozens of admins. But looking at the pie charts of many obscure sysops, one could get the picture that some just drift away after they have realised that adminship is no big deal after all and the flash of having those extra tools has worn off. Then you get a few old blokes (or even ladies), retired from active employment in RL, who just do what they have to, do it fairly regularly and reasonably fairly, and stay out of trouble - even if sometimes it's only by a hair's breath :)
- At the end of the day, any reliable plodder who has amassed a tidy sum of edits in most areas and without any hiccups, and knows they have no skellies in their cupboard should not have angst to run the gauntlet. Unfortunately there's nothing we can do about those who oppose with a vengeance, and those who simply use RfA to oppose the system - aye, there's the rub.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:14, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- In my opinion, the biggest problem may simply be finding prospective candidates that are actually willing to run. Such brave souls are often few and far between. AutomaticStrikeout ? 15:19, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- That's fair to say. And as long as the RFA is a gauntlet many individuals will pass on trying to go through it. As you put it, its no big deal so we need to put an end to the idea that being an admin is a big deal and only the editors who don't do anything and keep their heads down can get the tools. As I said before I still think the tools need to be split up. There are only a couple I need or want. Not the whole set and not the title. But there are several aspects of adminship such as editing templates and pulling more than 25000 articles into AWB that I could use if and when I start editing again. Kumioko (talk) 15:25, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- The question is how do we make adminship be seen as less of big deal? AutomaticStrikeout ? 00:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- And how do we make the RfC process less hostile and intimidating? There are many people (myself included) who would not dream of subjecting themselves to a week of hassle and attacks, just to get a mop so we can do additional chores here. --MelanieN (talk) 01:07, 2 August 2013 (UTC)d
- I know it's fun to say that, but RfA is no different from anything in real life. If you've done your homework and behaved yourself for a few months, it'll go off without a hitch. If you're not ready, then you're in for quite a bit of criticism, but nothing deeply soul-wrenching. You need thick skin on the internet, just as you do in the real world. – Juliancolton | Talk 01:30, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- What particularly frustrates me is that so many people are afraid of even running for adminship. Does it really need to be this scary? AutomaticStrikeout ? 01:52, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- One person with shaky credentials and thin skin runs, fails, then convinces everyone else that the problem is inherently with the voters and not with himself. The system works when you realize that admins have to occasionally do things they're not comfortable with (including, initially, standing for the position). – Juliancolton | Talk 01:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- "including, initially, standing for the position"...well put. --kelapstick(on the run) 03:08, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- Im sorry but I disagree. The RFA process works in the sense that a few editors, mostly ultra conservative ones who haven't gotten their hands dirty, get the tools. It fails in virtually every other sense. If you have dared to work in contraversial areas or are very active, then the likely hood of getting the tools is low. I would also add that the vaste majority of the "tools" are not inherently administrative but have been left bundled to the sysop role because there is no place else to put them and the community has utterly failed to separate them. In nearly every definition the RFA process is a stunning failure. Kumioko (talk) 03:40, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- "including, initially, standing for the position"...well put. --kelapstick(on the run) 03:08, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- One person with shaky credentials and thin skin runs, fails, then convinces everyone else that the problem is inherently with the voters and not with himself. The system works when you realize that admins have to occasionally do things they're not comfortable with (including, initially, standing for the position). – Juliancolton | Talk 01:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- What particularly frustrates me is that so many people are afraid of even running for adminship. Does it really need to be this scary? AutomaticStrikeout ? 01:52, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- I know it's fun to say that, but RfA is no different from anything in real life. If you've done your homework and behaved yourself for a few months, it'll go off without a hitch. If you're not ready, then you're in for quite a bit of criticism, but nothing deeply soul-wrenching. You need thick skin on the internet, just as you do in the real world. – Juliancolton | Talk 01:30, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- And how do we make the RfC process less hostile and intimidating? There are many people (myself included) who would not dream of subjecting themselves to a week of hassle and attacks, just to get a mop so we can do additional chores here. --MelanieN (talk) 01:07, 2 August 2013 (UTC)d
- The question is how do we make adminship be seen as less of big deal? AutomaticStrikeout ? 00:57, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- That's fair to say. And as long as the RFA is a gauntlet many individuals will pass on trying to go through it. As you put it, its no big deal so we need to put an end to the idea that being an admin is a big deal and only the editors who don't do anything and keep their heads down can get the tools. As I said before I still think the tools need to be split up. There are only a couple I need or want. Not the whole set and not the title. But there are several aspects of adminship such as editing templates and pulling more than 25000 articles into AWB that I could use if and when I start editing again. Kumioko (talk) 15:25, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
- In my opinion, the biggest problem may simply be finding prospective candidates that are actually willing to run. Such brave souls are often few and far between. AutomaticStrikeout ? 15:19, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
Well, that's pretty much what I said. All candidates are expected to have gained some experience in CSD, AfD, AIV, etc, be nice and civil, and have demonstrated a knowledge of policy by helping others at some of the help desks and/or demonstrated their knowledge of inclusion criteria by having either created substantial articles or making substantial contributions to existing articles. They will stand a good chance. Those who have repeatedly got things wrong, have a lot of declined CSDs, had a low hit rate at AfD, and have been warned for COPYVIO, 3R, incivility and/or PA, canvassing, CIR, offline negative stuff about Wikipedia, etc., and don't have a clean block log,or don't fess up to their past misdeeds, are going to have a hard time. Ladies, for some reason, usually enjoy a relatively clean ride at RfA and mostly pass with flying colours (I'll not categorise on why that is).
I don't think the RfA system is a stunning failure though, most of those who should pass do, and most of those who shouldn't, don't, but there is no guarantee of every RfA having a perfect outcome - there will always be the rare sysop who will get defrocked. It has always been the behaviour of the voters that has turned it into a 'horrible and broken process' and the stigma that all admins and admin candidates are potentially badmins needs to be nipped in the bud - well in the flower actually, because it has become utterly ludicrous. That's it, folks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:33, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- @Kumioko the 1441 figure is the total number of admins not just active admins - some of the people in that list will be in the next batch of desysops for inactivity. ϢereSpielChequers 12:06, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- In a similar vein to what Juliancolton is saying above, the hyperbole associated with RfA is unreasonable (e.g. "scary", "brave souls", "gauntlet"). During RFA2011 I remember phrases like "hellish nightmare", "snakepit", "trial by fire" being thrown around. In reality, worse things are said in a primary school playground than in the average RfA, and the recipient therein likely has a better sense of perspective Jebus989✰ 13:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- I agree with you, but nevertheless the number of RfA candidates has shrunk drastically. Bad public relations is bad public relations whether or not it is fair. AutomaticStrikeout ? 15:23, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- @Kudpung I could name several admins who shouldn't have gotten the tools, several who didn't and should, several who should have them and won't try due to the process as it is and finally some who are admins and should have the tools taken from them. I'm sure you can name some from each group too. My point is we cannot continue to promote 1 or 2 a month and then have 10-20 going inactive.
- @WereSpielChequers, your absolutely right and some will be in follow on lists or are as I said above. In fact most of those 1400 that are active don't use their tools. I hate the term but their basically just hat collectors rarely if ever using the tools. Using a very generous number I would say less than 100 are active and use the tools more than occasionally.
- @Jebus989, partially true but it doesn't mean its not true. People hate the process, most don't want to go through it and in fact most admins wouldn't do it again if they had too. That's partially why service limits for admins won't work. The community created the process and there is a large movement within the experienced members of it (both admins and non admins) that want to change it, yet any effort to do anything to change it meets with failure. Because just as the community has allowed the process to degrade, they fail to make any changes. If we want to change the process we also must change the perception of the process. We have started doing that this year as noted in the increase in RFA's and approvals but we have a long way to go if the project is going to succeed. Kumioko (talk) 15:37, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- We don't lose 10-20 a month to inactivity. We lose about 4-5 on average. If we can just promote that many a month, it would stabilize in terms of losing an administrator to inactivity vs gaining an active administrator. From what I've gathered though, we are going to be experiencing a slight increase in the latter half of this year, maybe 7-8 on average. RFA is pretty much the only thing we can hang our hat on at this point, but it's not much because the only thing we have done is started more nominations that would pass than fail. We're still not close to starting as many nominations as last year. I've done tons of statistical work looking at inactivity desysoppings and making sure that it's done on a monthly basis, as well as maintaining active administrator statistics here and keeping the list of former administrators as accurate as possible. Also, as of last week, we now have more former administrator accounts than we do active administrators. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 04:15, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- @Kumioko. Just because someone rarely uses the tools recently doesn't mean they were a hat collector when they applied to be an admin. This is a volunteer community, people's availability changes and sometimes some of us are going to retire from this or maybe just take a year out. Yes there are a number of admins who appear to hardly ever have used the tools. But part of this is showing a gap in our measurement - we know who the admins were pre 2005 but the logs of admin actions only go back to I think Dec 2005. So the hypothetical 2003 generation admin who performed a lot of logged actions on 03/04 and 05 but now sticks to an evening a month of editing and perhaps closing the odd RFC would appear as an admin with zero logged actions. Yet you wouldn't want to call them a hat collector would you? ϢereSpielChequers 13:25, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- You guys seem to be forgetting that I have been around a long time and although I am not an admin I have been doing admin stuff for a long time (I just have to let someone else take credit for the work). I have also been around this process for a long time and understand intimately how it works and doesn't work. So your not going to convince me that its a good process or that it works anymore than it seems I am going to convince you otherwise. The process is crap and needs to be fixed. Not justified and protected because it promotes a handful of candidates. As for the 10-20 a month number. That is the combination of those we remove the tools from due to inactivity and those who just stop editing and walk away. The number does fluctuate between zero and more than 10 but its still far more than we are promoting. In an age where more and more content requires admin action due to being protected, an increase in vandals, increases in CCI and other maintenance tasks, etc. Its no wonder we have backlogs in some areas reaching into months or years. People would help if they could, but we can't. Kumioko (talk) 14:23, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- There's a net figure of the number of admins who cease to be active each month and a gross figure. I suspect that all new admins are active for some time after they get the mop. But as only one person has passed RFA in the last few years without sufficient recent edits to be listed as an "active admin" the moment the bit is flipped, we might as well assume that all new admins are additional "active admins". There are also a steady trickle of returnees from long breaks and some intermittent editors who sometimes get above the 30 edits in 60 days threshold and sometimes drop below. All this contributes to the figures I listed above - despite appointing over 500 admins in the last five and half years we have over 300 fewer active ones. The Nett loss has averaged about five a month and gross a dozen a month but both oscillate wildly, thus far this year our nett loss has only been about 4 a month. ϢereSpielChequers 16:33, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I agree with you, but nevertheless the number of RfA candidates has shrunk drastically. Bad public relations is bad public relations whether or not it is fair. AutomaticStrikeout ? 15:23, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
- In a similar vein to what Juliancolton is saying above, the hyperbole associated with RfA is unreasonable (e.g. "scary", "brave souls", "gauntlet"). During RFA2011 I remember phrases like "hellish nightmare", "snakepit", "trial by fire" being thrown around. In reality, worse things are said in a primary school playground than in the average RfA, and the recipient therein likely has a better sense of perspective Jebus989✰ 13:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
Can you explain the "Admin attrition" stats for 2011-2013? Why aren't they divided up by month? It's hard to compare more recent years to Wikipedia or 5 or 10 years ago when you have collated the numbers in different ways. Newjerseyliz (talk) 20:50, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
- I've only done the admin attrition by year because to do it by month would be a lot more work. If anyone wants to create that then please go ahead, the results could be a great historical record. My suspicion is that most of the spikes will be because in month such and such crat so and so desysopped a bunch of inactive admins. But attrition is more complex than RFAs as it is the net result of all desysops minus new admins and returning admins, all displayed as a proportion of "active" admins. As for why we have seen the current pattern, frankly I don't know. It could be that when we first introduced desysopping for inactivity it prompted a number of people to come back, hence we had one year with a very small drop. or alternatively the desysopping rate may have stabilised, but of course RFAs fell sharply between 2011 and 2012 - enough of a fall to explain half the difference between those years in terms of attrition. ϢereSpielChequers 12:46, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
Increasing candidates
This year, we've had more successful candidates than unsuccessful ones. Frankly, RfA is not as bad as we make it out to be. A large part of increasing RfA candidates will be improving RfA's perception. Still, the question remains. How do we do it? AutomaticStrikeout ? 01:57, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- You can't make chicken salad from chicken shit. Any changes to the process are essentially just paving a cow path. I will admit the process is better than it was last year but its still failing to generate more than a handful of admins. Most of the ones it does generate are ultra conservative. They don't participate in contraversial areas, many of them vote in things like AFD or MFD with whatever the winning votes are. Not for what they think or feel about the topic. Because voting your conscience these days and decreasing your "AFD", "CFD", etc. percentages is a good way to not get the tools. Sorry for my pessimism here but I have been around for a long time and I am very familiar with the process. Kumioko (talk) 02:22, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I know. My theory is that if we can't change the process, we might as well quit trying to. Instead, let's try finding more of those rare candidates who are willing to run. AutomaticStrikeout ? 02:34, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I think finding candidates is only part of it but we also need to give the tools (certain ones not necessarily the whole set) to those who know how to use them or will use them. There isn't any sense in restricting template editing to Admins when only a handful know how to edit them. Its better to create a right to allow people who know how to edit them to do so without having to be admins. Same goes for a lot of other things like the API High limit and editing certain pages like the main page. There are a lot of non admins who know how to do these things and a lot of admins who don't. Kumioko (talk) 02:49, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I know. My theory is that if we can't change the process, we might as well quit trying to. Instead, let's try finding more of those rare candidates who are willing to run. AutomaticStrikeout ? 02:34, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- It's impossible to improve perception when we have perpetual conversations (driven by a few very vocal and inexplicably cynical individuals) about how awful the process is, driven. Most people aren't afraid of running until after they've failed once or twice anyway. – Juliancolton | Talk 02:31, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I disagree with your last sentence. I've asked a lot of people to run for adminship and the vast majority have declined. If the process wasn't so demanding, prospective candidates wouldn't stay away in droves. AutomaticStrikeout ? 02:34, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- These arguments about RFA have been going on for 7.5 years at a minimum. Have things gotten better, God no. Wiki editorship has been nosediving since 2007 and for quite valid reasons--virtually everything is dysfunctional. Many DYKs, GACs, and FACs now fail simply because there are nowhere near enough reviewers. It's virtually impossible to get rid of a bad admin. RFA is an ever-increasing troll fest. Until these issues are fixed talk of fixing RFA or anything else on wiki is pointless.PumpkinSky talk 02:39, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- @Automatic: "prospective candidates wouldn't stay away in droves." But what is a perspective candidate? Somebody who would have stood for the position on another wiki that employed another RfA-equivalence? I feel most active and highly respected editors who have chosen not to run an RfA did so because they simply feel they're better suited to occupy themselves with another part of the project, chiefly content creation. I've been an admin since 2008, and I've never done anything particularly hated or controversial, but at my most active I would still find myself having to answer difficult questions I didn't expect to have to answer about my deletions or blocks. If there's any reason to be hesitant about RfA, it should be what comes after you pass and start getting your feet wet. Now, I agree with PumpkinSky that many other areas of the wiki are suffering from a shortage of hands, especially areas that actually affect what our readers see (FAC, copyvio filtering, etc.). Those, to me, seem more pressing than the RfA "drought", which, as noted above, seems to be stabilizing and perhaps even improving. – Juliancolton | Talk 02:53, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- @Julian, the drought of new admins may finally be bottoming out, but the number of active admins is going to continue to fall and is heading to fall a long way to bring it into line with the flow of new admins. That has implication for many parts of the wiki, including copyvio, where admins are needed to delete stuff. If it's true that those who pass RFA tend to stick around much longer, then persuading more of the 2007-2011 wikigenerations to run should increase the numbers of editors available for all sorts of things. ϢereSpielChequers 14:23, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- I disagree with your last sentence. I've asked a lot of people to run for adminship and the vast majority have declined. If the process wasn't so demanding, prospective candidates wouldn't stay away in droves. AutomaticStrikeout ? 02:34, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- As one of the most recent candidates I have to disagree with Kumioko. Yes, candidates are grilled for a week, and at times I didn't enjoy the experience, but it wasn't worse than expected nor bad enough to discourage someone from running. In particular I'm well aware of being more of a deletionist than much of the community, yet my AfD record was hardly an issue - less so than I would have expected. I certainly cannot confirm that "voting your conscience", even when unpopular, is an obstacle to adminship. Or was I supposed to be included among those who don't vote their conscience? Huon (talk) 02:56, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I agree with Huon completely (also promoted in 2013).--Ymblanter (talk) 07:26, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Yaroslav, how can you second all this being himself a reasonable person? This fascist ochlocracy simply shut me up without giving any chance to respond to grievances and otherwise take the feedback from the community. Why do you feign that all goes right?! You should rally the remaining people, who can think yet, to disperse this crowd of black shirts that is called the RfA community. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:09, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Clearly it goes wrong sometimes, and any of us can give examples. My point was that it actually goes smoothly more often than expected, and additionally it can be in many cases predicted. I am pretty sure for instance that MelanieN who says above that she is not willing to submit herself to RfA, would have a smooth ride, unless of course she goes wild a week before and gets blocked for incivility, or unless she really annoyed too many people in the distant past and did not care to repair the damage.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:27, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Sometimes? Hardly. Dysfunction is the norm on wiki.PumpkinSky talk 10:47, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I am sure you have research data to substantiate this statement.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:21, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Of course, do you to support yours?PumpkinSky talk 11:25, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I agree, just because the process promotes a couple here and there doesn't mean it works. And to answer your question Huon, I wasn't referring to any particular admin. But the fact is that a lot of RFA's are brought down due to percentages at AFD, CFD or the like. Its a common argument in even those that pass and the argument is pointless for a couple reasons. 1) Admins don't generally delete stuff that doesn't meet consensus for such actions and 2) if they did it can just be reverted or recreated. Even in the admin toolset there are few things that cannot be reverted. Kumioko (talk) 14:23, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks for that, Ymblanter. It's true that people have suggested I run and I have always said no thanks. For me there's a second issue, in addition to the aggressive questioning and nitpicking, which you can always grit your teeth and deal with if you really want the bit. The main reason I haven't considered a run is the insistence that the person has to have a excellent knowledge of everything that an admin might conceivably have to deal with, things that I have never dealt with and have no interest in: copyright issues, images, IRC, technical details, etc. If I ever get the urge to be an admin I will have to study up on those things, but in the meantime it's not worth the effort for me. I'm not saying that admins shouldn't have to know all these things, just that the breadth of knowledge and experience demanded at RfA may be a deterrent for some. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe it's not. But it is a consideration that may be keeping down the number of RfAs. --MelanieN (talk) 14:58, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I do not think it is actually correct. From my observations, a candidate (i) is expected to have a clue in the areas they are going to work, Q1 of the nomination; (ii) if they screwed up badly in the past in some admin-related areas, to have some knowledge of those areas or to promise very clearly that they are not going to use the tools there. It would be perfectly acceptable if a candidate who wants say to work on MfD answers that they do not really understand copyright, and they are not planning to work with files for this reason.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:25, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Really? Because I do see detailed questions, with specific examples, "how would you handle this situation" type of thing. Are others here of the opinion that "I don't know and I don't plan to do that" would be accepted as an answer? --MelanieN (talk) 15:32, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- "I don't know and I don't plan to do that" could easily bring out an oppose or two. AutomaticStrikeout ? 15:33, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- (post edit conflict and with a different take from AutomaticStrikeout's) That was a concern at my RfA, with good reason, but they gave me it :-) I've seen the concern raised at pretty much every RfA over the past year, partly because I suspect it is indeed impossible to know everything, but I haven't seen many where it kept someone from getting it. Mine was a peculiar RfA and I wouldn't generally recommend the insouciance with which I treated it, but I think it's easy to be unnecessarily daunted on that score; many editors are looking for clue and for trustworthiness and many do accept the idea that not every admin will work in every area. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:36, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I agree that if the candidate declared they didn't know something it would likely generate a few opposes. How many depends on a lot of factors but it could derail the whole RFA. For what its worth I know how pretty much all the Admin stuff works, how to use all the tools (although since I haven't had access I admit I don't know everything) but I still can't get them. So its really less about what you know as your ability to go along with the program, not buck the system, don't ask too many difficult questions or try and make the processes better. Those people, like me, are considered to be trouble makers and won't get the tools. The tools are generally given to those, as I mentioned above, who are very conservative. Kumioko (talk) 15:49, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- (post edit conflict and with a different take from AutomaticStrikeout's) That was a concern at my RfA, with good reason, but they gave me it :-) I've seen the concern raised at pretty much every RfA over the past year, partly because I suspect it is indeed impossible to know everything, but I haven't seen many where it kept someone from getting it. Mine was a peculiar RfA and I wouldn't generally recommend the insouciance with which I treated it, but I think it's easy to be unnecessarily daunted on that score; many editors are looking for clue and for trustworthiness and many do accept the idea that not every admin will work in every area. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:36, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- "I don't know and I don't plan to do that" could easily bring out an oppose or two. AutomaticStrikeout ? 15:33, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Really? Because I do see detailed questions, with specific examples, "how would you handle this situation" type of thing. Are others here of the opinion that "I don't know and I don't plan to do that" would be accepted as an answer? --MelanieN (talk) 15:32, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I do not think it is actually correct. From my observations, a candidate (i) is expected to have a clue in the areas they are going to work, Q1 of the nomination; (ii) if they screwed up badly in the past in some admin-related areas, to have some knowledge of those areas or to promise very clearly that they are not going to use the tools there. It would be perfectly acceptable if a candidate who wants say to work on MfD answers that they do not really understand copyright, and they are not planning to work with files for this reason.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:25, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks for that, Ymblanter. It's true that people have suggested I run and I have always said no thanks. For me there's a second issue, in addition to the aggressive questioning and nitpicking, which you can always grit your teeth and deal with if you really want the bit. The main reason I haven't considered a run is the insistence that the person has to have a excellent knowledge of everything that an admin might conceivably have to deal with, things that I have never dealt with and have no interest in: copyright issues, images, IRC, technical details, etc. If I ever get the urge to be an admin I will have to study up on those things, but in the meantime it's not worth the effort for me. I'm not saying that admins shouldn't have to know all these things, just that the breadth of knowledge and experience demanded at RfA may be a deterrent for some. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe it's not. But it is a consideration that may be keeping down the number of RfAs. --MelanieN (talk) 14:58, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I agree, just because the process promotes a couple here and there doesn't mean it works. And to answer your question Huon, I wasn't referring to any particular admin. But the fact is that a lot of RFA's are brought down due to percentages at AFD, CFD or the like. Its a common argument in even those that pass and the argument is pointless for a couple reasons. 1) Admins don't generally delete stuff that doesn't meet consensus for such actions and 2) if they did it can just be reverted or recreated. Even in the admin toolset there are few things that cannot be reverted. Kumioko (talk) 14:23, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Of course, do you to support yours?PumpkinSky talk 11:25, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I am sure you have research data to substantiate this statement.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:21, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Sometimes? Hardly. Dysfunction is the norm on wiki.PumpkinSky talk 10:47, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Clearly it goes wrong sometimes, and any of us can give examples. My point was that it actually goes smoothly more often than expected, and additionally it can be in many cases predicted. I am pretty sure for instance that MelanieN who says above that she is not willing to submit herself to RfA, would have a smooth ride, unless of course she goes wild a week before and gets blocked for incivility, or unless she really annoyed too many people in the distant past and did not care to repair the damage.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:27, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Yaroslav, how can you second all this being himself a reasonable person? This fascist ochlocracy simply shut me up without giving any chance to respond to grievances and otherwise take the feedback from the community. Why do you feign that all goes right?! You should rally the remaining people, who can think yet, to disperse this crowd of black shirts that is called the RfA community. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:09, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I agree with Huon completely (also promoted in 2013).--Ymblanter (talk) 07:26, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Yes its true that the proportion of candidates who succeed is quite high, and I'd add many who do pass do so with such huge margins that if they'd run 6 months earlier we'd have had an extra admin for those 6 months. But the number of candidates is a function of several things. It's good that we are deterring almost all the newbies who used to run, less good that many who'd make perfectly good admins have decided they prefer to serve the community in other ways, and rather worrying if the decline in RFAs in some way reflects the fall in the numbers of new editors becoming active Wikipedians. I have to choose my words carefully here, because there are several different phenomena going on, some are more meaningful to some editors than others and some are better documented than others. If we ignore the effect of the edit filter and the change to intrawikis then edits on the English Wikipedia are in gentle decline - down 4% this year, and significantly down on the peak in 2007. Of course ignoring either of those and especially the edit filter gives us a completely false picture, but because the edit filter deals with vandalism rather differently than cluebot it is difficult to work out how the current "true" editing level compares with 2007. My suspicion is that if you allow for the edit filter, or if we'd implemented the edit filter as vandalfighting bots, then total editing probably peaked sometime after 2010. But it goes without saying that the automation of anti vandalism work has largely lost us one our biggest recruiting routes for RFA, unfortunately we still need admins to do a large part of the blocking, but the rest is mostly automated. Automating our vandal fighting, along with the rise of the smart mobile and similar "read but don't try to edit" devices has resulted in the latest generation of teenagers being almost exclusively users of Wikipedia. Teenagers and especially under 18s are now relatively rare in the community as we are probably greying by more than a year per year. One side effect of the greying of the pedia is that we have an increasing proportion of middle aged and elderly editors many of whom find RFA rather less attractive than the the stereotypical 2004-2007 era teenage admin who today make up the undergraduates and twenty somethings who are the core of the current admin cadre. Then of course there has been bizarre expectations inflation, despite the fact that neither tenure nor edit count are particularly good indications as to whether someone will make a good admin (imagine a driving test where anyone with more than x miles as a learner and more than y lessons was allowed to skip the bit about driving around with a tester and instead ushered into a hall for a written test). Those easily measured metrics are crowding out proper review of candidates, and I suspect deterring many people who'd make fine admins but lack the editcountitis that now seems to be required. ϢereSpielChequers 18:41, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- The community will not ever do anything about the total dysfunction that wiki is now, except if the the situation is about 10X worse than it is now. PumpkinSky talk 21:05, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- There are a lot of editors would make great admins but because of the RFA trollfest, would never pass an RFA. PumpkinSky talk 21:08, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- For that matter a large percentage of the current Admin cadre wouldn't pass under modern times if they were to rerun. Kumioko (talk) 21:13, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Indeed, and I think that last fact is what drives a lot of the growing hostility towards the non-hereditary "caste system" that has become entrenched here. With no community de-adminship process and a connected group of self-interested admins-for-life who unite to kill reforms, we are left with a vanilla Rfa process, well-described above, that discourages anyone with a history that is other than utterly bland from seeking the tools. I have previously proposed a staggered alphabetical de-adminship and re-elections, which got zero backing. Failing that, term limits should be proposed in an Rfc in which opposing admin !votes are heavily discounted due to COI. I submit that such a proposal would pass handily, if allowed to happen, but is unlikely to get off the ground because various admins start up with the "pitchforks" theme, an ironic term since in the story, the monster Frankenstein created was all too real. Jusdafax 22:23, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I admit that I no longer have any faith that the community will do anything to fix the process. It seems more and more that the community is incapable of passing anything remotely resembling reform on anything let alone something as contentious as RFA. So in the end no matter how much we discuss change or how much we all agree its needed we will be stuck with the same old problems. Kumioko (talk) 22:29, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- The 2010 Rfc on Community de-adminship was the last serious attempt I am aware of. The admin !vote killed it. Everything since then has been rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, as I see it. Jusdafax 22:46, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I for one find it quite insulting and hypocritical to say the community can be trusted to promote editors to admins but they can't be trusted to demote them. I have never heard a more stupid argument. I thought your submission was a good one and should have been passed and I agree that it was largely the admin cadre protecting their power that killed it. Kumioko (talk) 22:49, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- What I find insulting and hypocritical is to imply that administrators are not part of the community, and are too blinded by the unfathomable power of having access to a few extra buttons on a website to be able to contribute anything worthwhile to the solution to this alleged problem (if one even exists). Suggesting that admin !votes in such an RfC should be discounted is like arguing that non-admin !votes in an RfA should be discounted. Basalisk inspect damage⁄berate 22:56, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- (ec) Actually User:Tryptofish and User:Ben MacDui put in a lot more work than I did. Repeat, a lot more than I did. Towards the end the proposal got bogged down when a late addition to the process started haggling in a manner I felt was designed to burn out participants, and there were other irregularities. Three and a half years later, nothing has changed, except for the worse. As for the comment I edit conflicted with, I can't agree and can't help but wonder if you understand the meaning of "conflict of interest." Jusdafax 23:03, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- What I find insulting and hypocritical is to imply that administrators are not part of the community, and are too blinded by the unfathomable power of having access to a few extra buttons on a website to be able to contribute anything worthwhile to the solution to this alleged problem (if one even exists). Suggesting that admin !votes in such an RfC should be discounted is like arguing that non-admin !votes in an RfA should be discounted. Basalisk inspect damage⁄berate 22:56, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I for one find it quite insulting and hypocritical to say the community can be trusted to promote editors to admins but they can't be trusted to demote them. I have never heard a more stupid argument. I thought your submission was a good one and should have been passed and I agree that it was largely the admin cadre protecting their power that killed it. Kumioko (talk) 22:49, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- The 2010 Rfc on Community de-adminship was the last serious attempt I am aware of. The admin !vote killed it. Everything since then has been rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, as I see it. Jusdafax 22:46, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I admit that I no longer have any faith that the community will do anything to fix the process. It seems more and more that the community is incapable of passing anything remotely resembling reform on anything let alone something as contentious as RFA. So in the end no matter how much we discuss change or how much we all agree its needed we will be stuck with the same old problems. Kumioko (talk) 22:29, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Firstly to PumpkinSky, changes have happened. BLPprod being one of the bigger ones. I suspect that most of us would agree that the Wiki needs radical change, where we are less likely to agree is over what that change should be. As regards RFA, it doesn't need the situation to get ten times worse, just bad enough that we have a spree of vandalism or attack pages with no admins available for an hour or two. I honestly don't know how close we are to that happening, but the fewer active admins we have the more inevitable the scenario becomes. When it does we'll probably get a large batch of poorly scrutinised admins appointed. Obviously I'd prefer any one of several possible reforms to that, but after bashing my head against the brick wall that is resistance to RFA reform I'm now resigned to the inevitable. As regards there being lots of editors who'd make great admins but who wouldn't get through RFA, I agree, but we might not agree as to who those potential candidates were. For example we have lots of uncontentious editors who are here for perhaps a couple of evenings a month, I wouldn't suggest they run because I don't believe they'd be sufficiently active to get through RFA, but I believe that lots of them would be good admins. As Kumioko points out most current Admins wouldn't pass RFA if they ran today, for starters only one candidate with less than thirty edits in the sixty days before their RFA has passed RFA in years. About 800 of our current admins would fail for that reason alone and many of the rest would also fail for lack of activity. Yet if one judges from the desysops it is the highly active admins who are likely to be problematic. In practice I suspect that if we had some sort of fixed terms for admins and a bunch of candidates ran on the basis that in some specialist area of the wiki they use the tools for an hour a month, then hopefully those of the uncontentious ones who could be persuaded to run would get reappointed. But one of the reasons why I believe fixed terms would be a bad idea is that RFA is such that many good admins just wouldn't rerun. So I'm in the camp that that thinks RFA is broken because most existing admins would not have become admins if RFA was as broken as it is now when they first became admins. If anyone wants to convince me of the opposite case then first they need to say how else they'd recruit sufficient admins to keep AIV staffed and also have most attack pages deleted within minutes of creation. Then of course there's the issue that the fewer admins we have the greater their "scarcity value" is and hence my fear that the fewer admins we have the more detached they will get from the community. ϢereSpielChequers 23:10, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Indeed, and I think that last fact is what drives a lot of the growing hostility towards the non-hereditary "caste system" that has become entrenched here. With no community de-adminship process and a connected group of self-interested admins-for-life who unite to kill reforms, we are left with a vanilla Rfa process, well-described above, that discourages anyone with a history that is other than utterly bland from seeking the tools. I have previously proposed a staggered alphabetical de-adminship and re-elections, which got zero backing. Failing that, term limits should be proposed in an Rfc in which opposing admin !votes are heavily discounted due to COI. I submit that such a proposal would pass handily, if allowed to happen, but is unlikely to get off the ground because various admins start up with the "pitchforks" theme, an ironic term since in the story, the monster Frankenstein created was all too real. Jusdafax 22:23, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- For that matter a large percentage of the current Admin cadre wouldn't pass under modern times if they were to rerun. Kumioko (talk) 21:13, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- There are a lot of editors would make great admins but because of the RFA trollfest, would never pass an RFA. PumpkinSky talk 21:08, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- The community will not ever do anything about the total dysfunction that wiki is now, except if the the situation is about 10X worse than it is now. PumpkinSky talk 21:05, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- Probably the biggest issue non-admins have with admins is blocking. The power to stop you from editing and add a permanent black mark to your record is an overwhelming one, and creates a chilling effect. Some admins use the threat of their power as a sort of bully-lite. Perhaps if we can't get meaningful Community de-adminship, admins should have to get a second admin and possibly a third to confirm a block on a regular editor, but here again I doubt admins would go for such a proposal. Recently I have started using STiki on vandal patrol and have noticed a handy warning screen regarding templating regulars (defined generously as 50 edits or more.) Which made me wonder if that shouldn't be something that should pop upon an admin's screen when they click to block a regular. Even that exceedingly mild reform, I suspect, would be fought by some admins. Jusdafax 23:38, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I'm not a huge fan of the term limits either. I think there are a lot of areas we can improve this process but I don't think that's one. With that said I also do not think that admins should be there for life once the have shown a pattern of misconduct. Currently, there are at least a dozen admins that have shown a longterm pattern of misconduct and should have the tools removed. Instead they tell users to take it to Arbcom, knowing they are the only ones that can remove the tools and knowing that Arbcom isn't very responsive to desysopping admins outside a long and tie consuming Arbcom case. Even then its are. So essentially once an editor becomes an admin they know that the only way they'll lose access to the tools is for them to voluntarily give them up. As I said before, what we need is to make the easier to get and easier to take away. We also need to do is allow more people easier access to the tools they actually need, not the whole set of tools that that they neither want nor need so they can edit protected templates or see deleted content or some other specific tool that's bundled. Kumioko (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:02, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- I've created a fairly vague rough draft of an RfC at User:AutomaticStrikeout/Adminship RfC sandbox. Any thoughts? AutomaticStrikeout ? 00:44, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- ASO-glad to see you try, but it won't accomplish a thing. PumpkinSky talk 00:46, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- AC no longer has any balls to do their job. I said that in the current RFAR and I'll say that here. I'll also say that the current AC is totally useless and should all be fired. That and lack of community de-adminship are why we can't get rid of bad admins. And I agree, if community can give the bit, they can take it away. On wiki source admins had to re-rfa every two years and it works fine. But we're wasting our time talking as wiki is so dysfunctional no reform will happen at all. It's like expecting Congress/Parliament to clean up their own act. Admins will derail any attempt at reform. And admins aren't the only problem, GAC/FAC/DYK can no longer get enough reviewers. Articles don't get promoted simply due to lack of reviewers. Do we really wonder why editorship has been nosediving for 5 years? No we don't wonder, it's because wiki is now totally dysfunctional.PumpkinSky talk 00:46, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- I agree they have lost their way. Too interested in being the legislative body and no interest in the Arbitration mission. I gave up on reviewing GAC's and the like because of various reasons not the least of which was my personal feeling that if I cant be trusted to use the tools then I shouldn't be promoting articles either. I do an occassional review but its extremely rare. Kumioko (talk) 01:09, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- AC no longer has any balls to do their job. I said that in the current RFAR and I'll say that here. I'll also say that the current AC is totally useless and should all be fired. That and lack of community de-adminship are why we can't get rid of bad admins. And I agree, if community can give the bit, they can take it away. On wiki source admins had to re-rfa every two years and it works fine. But we're wasting our time talking as wiki is so dysfunctional no reform will happen at all. It's like expecting Congress/Parliament to clean up their own act. Admins will derail any attempt at reform. And admins aren't the only problem, GAC/FAC/DYK can no longer get enough reviewers. Articles don't get promoted simply due to lack of reviewers. Do we really wonder why editorship has been nosediving for 5 years? No we don't wonder, it's because wiki is now totally dysfunctional.PumpkinSky talk 00:46, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- ASO-glad to see you try, but it won't accomplish a thing. PumpkinSky talk 00:46, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- I've created a fairly vague rough draft of an RfC at User:AutomaticStrikeout/Adminship RfC sandbox. Any thoughts? AutomaticStrikeout ? 00:44, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- @Jusdafax An alternative way to stop excessive blocking of the regulars is to revive my proposal of upbundling "block regular" to the crats. The main argument used against it last time was that it would create anomalous stuations where an admin could block one side of an edit warring pair but only report the other for a crat to block. But otherwise I think it has a lot going for it, we need lots of admins to block the spammers and and vandals who come in every day, and we need them blocked quickly especially the vandals. So we can't upbundle block/unblock altogether. However the few justified blocks and unblocks of regulars could be left to a small group of highly trusted editors, and doing that would take out much of the drama and wheelwarring. It would also as you point out put admins on much more of a level playing field with other regular editors. ϢereSpielChequers 15:44, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- I'm not a huge fan of the term limits either. I think there are a lot of areas we can improve this process but I don't think that's one. With that said I also do not think that admins should be there for life once the have shown a pattern of misconduct. Currently, there are at least a dozen admins that have shown a longterm pattern of misconduct and should have the tools removed. Instead they tell users to take it to Arbcom, knowing they are the only ones that can remove the tools and knowing that Arbcom isn't very responsive to desysopping admins outside a long and tie consuming Arbcom case. Even then its are. So essentially once an editor becomes an admin they know that the only way they'll lose access to the tools is for them to voluntarily give them up. As I said before, what we need is to make the easier to get and easier to take away. We also need to do is allow more people easier access to the tools they actually need, not the whole set of tools that that they neither want nor need so they can edit protected templates or see deleted content or some other specific tool that's bundled. Kumioko (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:02, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- Probably the biggest issue non-admins have with admins is blocking. The power to stop you from editing and add a permanent black mark to your record is an overwhelming one, and creates a chilling effect. Some admins use the threat of their power as a sort of bully-lite. Perhaps if we can't get meaningful Community de-adminship, admins should have to get a second admin and possibly a third to confirm a block on a regular editor, but here again I doubt admins would go for such a proposal. Recently I have started using STiki on vandal patrol and have noticed a handy warning screen regarding templating regulars (defined generously as 50 edits or more.) Which made me wonder if that shouldn't be something that should pop upon an admin's screen when they click to block a regular. Even that exceedingly mild reform, I suspect, would be fought by some admins. Jusdafax 23:38, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
- I like the proposed Rfc, AS. Run it, it will be interesting. One note, I actually favor a four-year term for admins, myself. Jusdafax 06:06, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- If you don't think the current Arbs are doing a good job then say why and create a voters guide for next time. Maybe people will agree with you and kick the current incumbents out, maybe the current incumbents will respond to criticism. Maybe we need an RFC to change Arbcom's remit so for example they do have authority over the IRC admins channel or they can desysop an admin for bringing the project into disrepute. But it simply isn't true that admins can only lose the tools voluntarily. This year we've only had one admin resign under a cloud and one desysopped. normally we'd have lost more by now, and the only case that I've really followed should in my view have resulted in a desysopping and probably some interaction bans by contrast most of my criticism of Arbcom in previous years was in cases where they were too heavy handed. But the best response to that is to broaden Arbcom's remit and ensure we elect the right people to it. If you try again to replace or supplement Arbcom with some process that omits the safeguards of Arbcom then don't be surprised if you fail again, especially if you have such an easily refuted case as saying that currently the only way to lose the mop is voluntarily. As for Arbcom processes taking too long, much of the delay involves time for people to put their side of the story, and time for a group of ininvolved volunteers to consider and deliberate. You need to tread very carefully when you consider changing that, and be very specific as to what reforms to Arbcom you are proposing. Otherwise you risk making the whole thing worse - remember our biggest problem re adminship is recruiting new admins. Implementing a less fair system for supervising them is not going to help persuade more people to run. ϢereSpielChequers 09:39, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- That'd be another waste of time. It could have a majority support but the incumbent power base, admins and arbs, would derail it, just like RFA reform. To reiterate, the entire wiki system is totally dysfunctional. Don't forget, I'm one of the few people that have seen wiki from the extreme of both ends. In order for things to change, two things must happen: 1) wiki needs to recognize there are problems--this we've known for a long time and 2) be willing to change those problems--this we are far, far from doing. PumpkinSky talk 10:50, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- I disagree. I'm pretty sure that we have consensus that there are significant problems on Wikipedia. But where we disagree is over the defining of those problems, their priority and in some cases their solution. So for some people one of our problems is that we have a bunch of teenage admins doing things that legal minors possibly shouldn't and supervising a bunch of older and wiser content contributors. For others, including myself, part of the problem of the greying of the pedia is that we now have a bunch of twenty somethings who think they are supervising a bunch of teenagers when actually they are offending a bunch of middle aged men by treating them as teenagers. Problems get harder to solve where they involve misunderstandings and philosophical clashes, and just as most of our religious and nationalistic article disputes involve people who know their side to be right, so increasingly do our governance ones. But where the divide is ultimately about a misunderstanding we can work to achieve consensus by explaining how we understand the situation and being willing to test our assumptions against reality. For example one of the biggest divides within the community in its broadest sense is between those who think that the best response to an unsourced edit is a revert, and those who regard that as newbie biting. A useful bit of research would be for someone to work out which approach is most effective in teaching newbies to cite their sources. Closer to home, pretty much everyone agrees that there are "bad admins" out there who should be desysopped. But when we get more specific, there is a big divide between those who would like to desysop someone like me for a strict interpretation of CSD criteria that sees me declining lots of CSDs that other admins might stretch a point and delete out of process, and those who'd like to desysop some admins whose flexible interpretation of the CSD criteria would get them at least a 40% oppose at RFA if they had to rerun. Now a general call for desysopping "bad admins" might get support from people with very different interpretations of what a bad admin is, it's only when you start defining "bad admin" that your consensus falls apart. But periodic admin reconfirmations don't just worry those who'd expect to fail them. There's also the real risk that we'd lose too many admins to keep the site running with volunteer admins, especially with RFA as dysfunctional at it has been for years. ϢereSpielChequers 14:10, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- Unfortunately I agree with PS. I don't see the admin cadre allowing any changes that would reduce their power base or that would allow more editors access to some tools. This isn't just a perception but has been shown repeatedly in a dozen or more reforms over the years. Looking at the reforms its nearly always a majority of admins who vote them down because there are more admins who watch the RFC's and advanced areas than those of us that are advanced users but don't have the tools. So although there are more users than admins, the majority of the ones who would watch these areas are admins. Also, unfortunately I think things will need to get much worse before any meaningful change is allowed to happen. Until we are in such dire need of admins that the community or the WMF is required to do something drastic, we'll be stuck with the same process we have By that time though it will likely be too late to fix it. Kumioko (talk) 16:00, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- There have been big reforms - the unbundling of rollback being one of the most dramatic. And while I can remember several attempted changes where the balance of !voting was very different among admins or non-admins; I doubt if there have been many where there was consensus for change amongst non-admins and enough admin opposition to stop that change. Happy to have that tested if you can name any RFCs that illustrated such an admin non-admin divide. However I am willing to predict that such incidents will arise in future if we don't reform RFA and open it up to the editors who joined us in 2008-2011. ϢereSpielChequers 16:46, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- Oh hogwash. Unbundling rollback is the biggest farce ever. All that does is let you do in one click what used to take 3 (i think). Rollback is just smoke and mirrors and not a reform of substance at all. Changes of substance that need done but won't happen unless it gets about 100x worse than now: RFA reform, community desyssop, abolish arbcom, treat content editors like people instead of shitbags, removal of bogus blocks from the log (which is one of the many reasons scotty's rfa tool is bullshit, it counts all blocks as bad, even a reblock if you are unblocked to edit so you can make a statement), cease forcing people to wear the Wiki Scarlett Letter forever, and end the double standards of admins vs non-admins.PumpkinSky talk 17:41, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- Although I agree that splitting out Rollbacker and Filmover were a step in the right direction they are far from "big reforms". They are really little changes actually and only succeeded because they, IMO, offered no loss of power to the admins. The most important thing I think we need to address is as PS put it the treating of Admins above editors. They have a few extra tools and it time we starting treating it that way. They aren't true database admins they don't have server access, most don't do development. Its time we allow more people to help out and allow expanded access to the tools. Now no one is saying that every editor should have access to every tool but if the editor has shown they are capable and have been here for a while then there shouldn't be any problem with allowing them to access some things. If they want to participate in CCI then they need certain tools to do that. If they want to help with vandal fighting then certain tools go with that. If they are like me and do a lot of gnoming and maintenance stuff then there are tools that lend themselves to that. But in most cases the whole toolset isn't needed to do these and there is no valid reason in today's editing environment that an editor who has been around for a while shouldn't be trusted with many of them...or all of them. If they screw up then they can be taken away. Without all the pomp and circumstance that is currently associated with the RFA/Desysopping process. Give them the access and let them contribute and if they abuse it remove it..that's it. Really easy. I'll add to that one exception and that is block/unblock. I personally think anyone with this right should be required to report their real life identity with proof of age (just like Checckuser and Beauracrat) to the WMF. Kumioko (talk) 19:36, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- Kumioko, the two most contentious tools that admins have are block and delete, and of the two I think that delete leads to more RFA fails and block more desysops. I'm not sure that proof of age for RFA would achieve much now - if you introduced a minimum age of 18 five years ago you would have lost a lot of admins, but now I'm not sure you'd lose any. Or rather the people you'd lose would be the ones who don't trust the WMF to know who they are, and they are often the last people that any of us want to lose. But the other thing is is the practical consequences, now I rarely delete anything other than G7 G10 and U1, so I'm unlikely to get a subpoena from some annoyed spammer who doesn't want their spam deleted off Wikipedia. But we all rely on some anonymous admins who do delete such pages, and the WMF can't currently be a conduit for such subpoenas because it doesn't know who these admins are. If it did then we have a problem and I really don't see enough advantages to outweigh that. By contrast what do you think of my idea of upbundling "block regular" to the crats? ϢereSpielChequers 20:52, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- @PumpkinSky Unbundling Rollback may have lost some of its significance, but I think at one stage it was a precondition of using Huggle. More importantly it transformed RFA. Just look at the way the number of RFAs per month shifted in March 2008. As for your other proposals, If you believe in them write up a case for the change and file an RFC. Taking two at random, I can't remember an RFC proposing the abolition of Arbcom on this wiki, though I think it has happened on another wiki. I'd be interested to read such a proposal, and in particular I would be interested to see which of Arbcom's roles you would simply abolish, which you'd transfer elsewhere and who you'd transfer them to. If the answer involved a significant de facto transfer of power from Arbcom to the Admins IRC channel then I think you'd get some surprising defenders of Arbcom. As for invalid blocks, I think that the record of RFA is that we are pretty good at ignoring accidental and invalid blocks, and as long as they are a year or more old we are also very willing to accept explanations or at least an assurance of things not being repeated. But again if you want to see certain types of blocks erased file an RFC, I for one don't remember when we last considered that idea. Personally my list would be very different:
- Upbundle block/unblock regular to the crats.
- Unblock most longterm blocked IPs and IP ranges - especially former open proxies
- Implement smart blocking as an option for IP ranges - so only editors who are using the same sort of browser O/S and hardware as whoever did the edits that merited the range block get caught by the block
- Stop using EN wiki as the test wiki for new software and only implement new tools here after they have been properly tested and ideally battle tested on a wiki that has volunteered for them.
- Stop the endless Engvar battles amongst Newbies by making Engvar a user preference, and pointing those who care about such things at our humongous list of words like bonnet, hood and pants that subsequently would require some sort of hidden template to make them correctly render on opposite sides of the pond.
- Fold AFC into Special Newpages, with a new "draft" status for any article not yet marked as patrolled, and make those articles {{noindex}} but with a new speedy deletion criteria of "lacks a reliable independent source" for new articles on commercial oranisations.
- Implement flagged revisions on all articles as they've done on DE wiki. If I'm forced to compromise on that I'd go for invisible pending changes. So readers and new editors won't notice a difference other than less vandalism getting through, but vandal fighters will be able to spend their time checking edits that no other human vandalfighter has checked.
- Resolve the "revert unsourced" problem either by requiring editors to cite their sources and prompting them for a source when they save their edit, or by stopping patrollers from reverting newbies' edits merely for being unsourced (unsourced and clearly bonkers would still be fair game). One of these would be an inclusionist victory, the other a deletionists one - but I think moving either way would be better than the status quo.
- Reform RFA so that adminship becomes the norm for sane sensible longterm members of the community that are willing to occasionally wield the mop. ϢereSpielChequers 20:39, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- An invalid block is invalid from day one. It shouldn't take a year to "erase". You make Some good proposals. I especially like the EngVar one. Probably something close to your list and my list is what's really needed but we both know that'll never happened. While I've truly enjoyed this talk, it will amount to nothing and either none of the ideas will ever get implemented or if it does, it'll only be tiny pieces far too long into the future, ie, too little too late. PumpkinSky talk 20:53, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- Although I agree that splitting out Rollbacker and Filmover were a step in the right direction they are far from "big reforms". They are really little changes actually and only succeeded because they, IMO, offered no loss of power to the admins. The most important thing I think we need to address is as PS put it the treating of Admins above editors. They have a few extra tools and it time we starting treating it that way. They aren't true database admins they don't have server access, most don't do development. Its time we allow more people to help out and allow expanded access to the tools. Now no one is saying that every editor should have access to every tool but if the editor has shown they are capable and have been here for a while then there shouldn't be any problem with allowing them to access some things. If they want to participate in CCI then they need certain tools to do that. If they want to help with vandal fighting then certain tools go with that. If they are like me and do a lot of gnoming and maintenance stuff then there are tools that lend themselves to that. But in most cases the whole toolset isn't needed to do these and there is no valid reason in today's editing environment that an editor who has been around for a while shouldn't be trusted with many of them...or all of them. If they screw up then they can be taken away. Without all the pomp and circumstance that is currently associated with the RFA/Desysopping process. Give them the access and let them contribute and if they abuse it remove it..that's it. Really easy. I'll add to that one exception and that is block/unblock. I personally think anyone with this right should be required to report their real life identity with proof of age (just like Checckuser and Beauracrat) to the WMF. Kumioko (talk) 19:36, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- Oh hogwash. Unbundling rollback is the biggest farce ever. All that does is let you do in one click what used to take 3 (i think). Rollback is just smoke and mirrors and not a reform of substance at all. Changes of substance that need done but won't happen unless it gets about 100x worse than now: RFA reform, community desyssop, abolish arbcom, treat content editors like people instead of shitbags, removal of bogus blocks from the log (which is one of the many reasons scotty's rfa tool is bullshit, it counts all blocks as bad, even a reblock if you are unblocked to edit so you can make a statement), cease forcing people to wear the Wiki Scarlett Letter forever, and end the double standards of admins vs non-admins.PumpkinSky talk 17:41, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- There have been big reforms - the unbundling of rollback being one of the most dramatic. And while I can remember several attempted changes where the balance of !voting was very different among admins or non-admins; I doubt if there have been many where there was consensus for change amongst non-admins and enough admin opposition to stop that change. Happy to have that tested if you can name any RFCs that illustrated such an admin non-admin divide. However I am willing to predict that such incidents will arise in future if we don't reform RFA and open it up to the editors who joined us in 2008-2011. ϢereSpielChequers 16:46, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- Unfortunately I agree with PS. I don't see the admin cadre allowing any changes that would reduce their power base or that would allow more editors access to some tools. This isn't just a perception but has been shown repeatedly in a dozen or more reforms over the years. Looking at the reforms its nearly always a majority of admins who vote them down because there are more admins who watch the RFC's and advanced areas than those of us that are advanced users but don't have the tools. So although there are more users than admins, the majority of the ones who would watch these areas are admins. Also, unfortunately I think things will need to get much worse before any meaningful change is allowed to happen. Until we are in such dire need of admins that the community or the WMF is required to do something drastic, we'll be stuck with the same process we have By that time though it will likely be too late to fix it. Kumioko (talk) 16:00, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- I disagree. I'm pretty sure that we have consensus that there are significant problems on Wikipedia. But where we disagree is over the defining of those problems, their priority and in some cases their solution. So for some people one of our problems is that we have a bunch of teenage admins doing things that legal minors possibly shouldn't and supervising a bunch of older and wiser content contributors. For others, including myself, part of the problem of the greying of the pedia is that we now have a bunch of twenty somethings who think they are supervising a bunch of teenagers when actually they are offending a bunch of middle aged men by treating them as teenagers. Problems get harder to solve where they involve misunderstandings and philosophical clashes, and just as most of our religious and nationalistic article disputes involve people who know their side to be right, so increasingly do our governance ones. But where the divide is ultimately about a misunderstanding we can work to achieve consensus by explaining how we understand the situation and being willing to test our assumptions against reality. For example one of the biggest divides within the community in its broadest sense is between those who think that the best response to an unsourced edit is a revert, and those who regard that as newbie biting. A useful bit of research would be for someone to work out which approach is most effective in teaching newbies to cite their sources. Closer to home, pretty much everyone agrees that there are "bad admins" out there who should be desysopped. But when we get more specific, there is a big divide between those who would like to desysop someone like me for a strict interpretation of CSD criteria that sees me declining lots of CSDs that other admins might stretch a point and delete out of process, and those who'd like to desysop some admins whose flexible interpretation of the CSD criteria would get them at least a 40% oppose at RFA if they had to rerun. Now a general call for desysopping "bad admins" might get support from people with very different interpretations of what a bad admin is, it's only when you start defining "bad admin" that your consensus falls apart. But periodic admin reconfirmations don't just worry those who'd expect to fail them. There's also the real risk that we'd lose too many admins to keep the site running with volunteer admins, especially with RFA as dysfunctional at it has been for years. ϢereSpielChequers 14:10, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- That'd be another waste of time. It could have a majority support but the incumbent power base, admins and arbs, would derail it, just like RFA reform. To reiterate, the entire wiki system is totally dysfunctional. Don't forget, I'm one of the few people that have seen wiki from the extreme of both ends. In order for things to change, two things must happen: 1) wiki needs to recognize there are problems--this we've known for a long time and 2) be willing to change those problems--this we are far, far from doing. PumpkinSky talk 10:50, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- If you don't think the current Arbs are doing a good job then say why and create a voters guide for next time. Maybe people will agree with you and kick the current incumbents out, maybe the current incumbents will respond to criticism. Maybe we need an RFC to change Arbcom's remit so for example they do have authority over the IRC admins channel or they can desysop an admin for bringing the project into disrepute. But it simply isn't true that admins can only lose the tools voluntarily. This year we've only had one admin resign under a cloud and one desysopped. normally we'd have lost more by now, and the only case that I've really followed should in my view have resulted in a desysopping and probably some interaction bans by contrast most of my criticism of Arbcom in previous years was in cases where they were too heavy handed. But the best response to that is to broaden Arbcom's remit and ensure we elect the right people to it. If you try again to replace or supplement Arbcom with some process that omits the safeguards of Arbcom then don't be surprised if you fail again, especially if you have such an easily refuted case as saying that currently the only way to lose the mop is voluntarily. As for Arbcom processes taking too long, much of the delay involves time for people to put their side of the story, and time for a group of ininvolved volunteers to consider and deliberate. You need to tread very carefully when you consider changing that, and be very specific as to what reforms to Arbcom you are proposing. Otherwise you risk making the whole thing worse - remember our biggest problem re adminship is recruiting new admins. Implementing a less fair system for supervising them is not going to help persuade more people to run. ϢereSpielChequers 09:39, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
- I imagine that there are a fair amount of people who frankly just find the admin type of work somewhat uninteresting, and don't want to give the false impression that they have the time and interest to contribute to admin activities. If the goal is to reduce backlogs and get things done, then convincing people that work on admin activities is a worthy use of their time could be just as big of an issue as the perception that the RfA process is overwhelming. Admin work is thankless and I really appreciate everyone who does it, by the way. We really should have an automatic list of those who do the day-to-day stuff to give them more recognition. II | (t - c) 06:54, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
- ssshhhh, don't talk too loud. Admin work is thankless? - not to those who like wearing shiny buttons. XOttawahitech (talk) 14:10, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
- The way a lot of them act you wouldn't know its thankless. If it was they wouldn't try so hard to keep people from helping out or protecting their power. Kumioko (talk) 14:31, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
- I don't doubt that it's largely thankless...but is that the motivation? If I had the bit, I wouldn't expect much thanks. I just don't feel like it's worth it to run the gauntlet so that I have the privilege of being able to volunteer more time. --Onorem (talk) 14:45, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
- ssshhhh, don't talk too loud. Admin work is thankless? - not to those who like wearing shiny buttons. XOttawahitech (talk) 14:10, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
- To address the topic raised above about "increasing candidates": there is one ongoing RFA discussion underway, concerning an older editor who has been with Wikipedia for ages and has half a zillion edits, and he is being put through an absolute meatgrinder. Anyone who has any regard for this editor would never expose himself or herself to that kind of treatment. That is something you may want to take into consideration in evaluating the process, if there is an interest in increasing the number of qualified administrators. Coretheapple (talk) 15:48, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
- LoL. When I was swiftly shut up by RfA frequenters and ’crats before any non-hostile user managed to ask a question, nobody resented. And when Buster7 with his poorly answered questions has now about 60% support, it is described as a meatgrinder. The propaganda of double standards and hypocrisy never stops. Just compare these two RfAs. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:42, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
- I'm sorry that your RfA ran into difficulty, but they don't seem to have any bearing whatever on the problems encountered by this latest candidate. Coretheapple (talk) 20:00, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
- LoL. When I was swiftly shut up by RfA frequenters and ’crats before any non-hostile user managed to ask a question, nobody resented. And when Buster7 with his poorly answered questions has now about 60% support, it is described as a meatgrinder. The propaganda of double standards and hypocrisy never stops. Just compare these two RfAs. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:42, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
- Let's not be coy here. He's not just some editor to you, he is a "wiki-friend" and you are talking purely from that perspective. Referring to him as "this latest candidate", and "this editor" implies a certain distance. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:27, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
- Oh please, go away. Coretheapple (talk) 17:53, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
- Let's not be coy here. He's not just some editor to you, he is a "wiki-friend" and you are talking purely from that perspective. Referring to him as "this latest candidate", and "this editor" implies a certain distance. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:27, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
- I think that anyone who is interested in becoming an Admin (like me) looks at the RfA process and shudders. There seem to be three types of ways it can go that I've seen:
- Where the candidate is well-known, well-liked and can turn out the votes. They basically sail through.
- Where the candidate isn't well-known and has a decent record of edits and is well-tempered. Their record is heavily scrutinized for any negative signs that would rule them out. A harsh word spoken to another editor? There will be a diff posted. A bad edit decision? That will be brought up, too.
- Where the candidate clearly isn't right for the job or hasn't prepared themselves for questions. They will either withdraw or go down in flames.
It's seems like it's Group #2 (by far the largest group) that you need to be concerned about. These people, who'd probably make decent admins but have their own "not perfect" track record (as do 99.999% of Wikipedians do) will find the RfA intimidating and somewhat grueling. Some are up for the task any way but a far greater number will just decide they'd rather not be subjected to the process.
I'm not saying it's time to lower standards. But the RfA process could be less brutal and cruel. An example? The "Yes" votes are typically something like "Support. He'd do a fine job!" The "No" votes are more like "Strongly Oppose. And here's why, he handled X poorly, he showed immaturity in situation Y and his conduct bordered on PA in Z." This isn't just done once, often everyone who opposes a candidate seems to feel compelled to innumerate their shortcomings. What is wrong with a simple "Oppose. Not ready yet"?
Applying to be considered to be an Admin shouldn't be like a frat hazing. Editors should ask candidates good questions, weigh their strengths and weaknesses fairly and then cast a vote. If he or she wants to know why, they can always contact those who opposed them afterwards for details. Newjerseyliz (talk) 20:50, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
- @NewJerseyliz The problem of making this less of a hazing is that different people have different perceptions as to what counts as hazing and what counts as a constructive oppose. For me personally "Oppose. Not ready yet" would be a fairly civil response to someone who was grossly unqualified, but deeply incivil to anyone who had been here a few months and had contributed thousands of edits. "Oppose, Not ready yet, happy to consider a run in future if deletion tagging has improved (per the examples cited by the first three opposes) and editor has gained some experience of using reliable sources". Would be more my idea of a civil oppose, crucially it focusses on the edits not the person, and gives both the candidate and anyone watching an understanding of my expectations for support. My first RFA was unsuccessful and there were some opposes in my second, so I know the importance of disclosing your reasons when opposing. There is also the possibility of the opposer having missed something, so an oppose of "and editor has gained some experience of using reliable sources" is of course best avoided by making sure you give examples of that in your answer to Q2, but you can respond to such opposes with "look at my work with the Article Rescue Squadron, I've rescued this list of notable articles by adding reliable sources". Sometimes people make such responses in the same RFA, othertimes they wait a few months and run again, and when you run again you really need to be able to answer the question "what has changed since your last RFA, which of the oppose reasons then no longer apply?" You can only answer such a question if people give a constructive oppose that explains why you don't yet meet their criteria. Think of it like a driving test, if you know you failed because you need glasses, had a few collisions and were driving too fast then you know what you need to work on for your next test. If you fail "for shedloads of reasons" then you don't know what you'd need to change before running again. ϢereSpielChequers 08:24, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
- As someone who nominated User:History2007, who in my eyes was more than qualified, but who was denied adminship at least in part because he didn't seem to take it as "seriously" as some would have wanted, I tend to agree that there are flaws with the process. If people give reasonable, competent reasons for opposing someone's RfA, like WereSpielChequers indicates above, that is, to my eyes, the best we can hope for. There are some oppose !votes, details of which I will not go into here, which are dramatically useless and, in at least one recent case, seem to have been directly responsible in some part for the casting of several more support !votes for the candidate, ultimately making that "oppose" counterproductive. Those types of statements sometimes are seen as what they are, and are dealt with appropriately by the closing crats. I prefer it myself when someone indicates why they oppose, although I agree that if there are a lot of opposes that can make the candidate feel somewhat paranoid. And, honestly, considering the fairly regular abuse some admins get from other editors, sometimes almost solely due to their being an admin, maybe, in some cases, having a bit of "hazing" involved isn't a bad idea. God himself, if such a being exists, would probably be subject to regular attacks here for his use or misuse of tools, particularly if he/she/it were to be involved in contentious areas. That being the case, a little exposure to the heat they can expect to face if they become admins might not be a bad idea. I personally wish such behavior did not occur in the first place, but it does seem to be the reality of the situation. John Carter (talk) 14:55, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
- I won't comment too much on User:History2007's RfA because I didn't vote there as it was withdrawn before I had a chance to. That said, the way a candidate approaches and manages their RfA can have a significant impact on the outcome however much or little good or bad work they have done. It looks however as if with User:History2007 the project has lost a good content contributor and that shouldn't happen. That's why it's essential that candidates read all the advice pags and prepare themselves well. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:35, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
- As someone who nominated User:History2007, who in my eyes was more than qualified, but who was denied adminship at least in part because he didn't seem to take it as "seriously" as some would have wanted, I tend to agree that there are flaws with the process. If people give reasonable, competent reasons for opposing someone's RfA, like WereSpielChequers indicates above, that is, to my eyes, the best we can hope for. There are some oppose !votes, details of which I will not go into here, which are dramatically useless and, in at least one recent case, seem to have been directly responsible in some part for the casting of several more support !votes for the candidate, ultimately making that "oppose" counterproductive. Those types of statements sometimes are seen as what they are, and are dealt with appropriately by the closing crats. I prefer it myself when someone indicates why they oppose, although I agree that if there are a lot of opposes that can make the candidate feel somewhat paranoid. And, honestly, considering the fairly regular abuse some admins get from other editors, sometimes almost solely due to their being an admin, maybe, in some cases, having a bit of "hazing" involved isn't a bad idea. God himself, if such a being exists, would probably be subject to regular attacks here for his use or misuse of tools, particularly if he/she/it were to be involved in contentious areas. That being the case, a little exposure to the heat they can expect to face if they become admins might not be a bad idea. I personally wish such behavior did not occur in the first place, but it does seem to be the reality of the situation. John Carter (talk) 14:55, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
The section title here is "Drought stabilising?". A lot of good points have been made ... but the promotion rate continues at roughly 2 per month. We had more than that in the first quarter, but we've always had a bump during the well-attended RfCs on the subject. - Dank (push to talk) 19:54, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
The aftermath
I'm looking at Wikipedia:Former administrators/reason/for cause and wondering if RFA has any predictive power at all. It would seem that the years are able to change a person, for good or bad. The nitpicks fade away, to be replaced by issues which may or may not have had their roots a long time ago. Thoughts? bibliomaniac15 00:01, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- Wiki never forgives and never forgets. The fact that that page exists and is tracked to that level of detail is some proof of that. PumpkinSky talk 00:08, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- I don't want to talk about anyone in particular, but in general I don't think Rfa is very predictive of the admins who will get in trouble with Arbcom. I'll look through the Rfas of a few people on that page and see if it changes my mind. Mark Arsten (talk) 00:34, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- Ok, I looked through a few and my opinion is the same. I only looked at admins who passed Rfa after January 2008 (since there wasn't much scrutiny going far back). What stuck out to me is that Rfa opposers generally focused on things like Afd votes, content creation, number of Rfas and Aiv reports, but those didn't turn out to be the issues that the admins were desysopped for. Usually it seems to be because of blocking/unblocking, behavior in disputes, or sockpuppetry. Those things are hard to screen for at Rfa, since it's hard to predict how someone will use the block button, anyone can behave if they know they have a run for admin coming up, and checkusering candidates is something the community would never go for (although I don't see what the problem would be with that). Mark Arsten (talk) 01:57, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- Nope. About a year ago I looked at the 31 admins desysopped by ArbCom and slapped together a spreadsheet out of curiosity. (I was not able to find an RfA for two candidates.) Among the remainder, six had RfAs that were completely unopposed, that includes the candidates with the shortest period between RfA and desysopping (Archtransit, 1 month) and the longest (Rich Farmbrough, 87 months). The median support percentage at RfA for admins desysopped by ArbCom was 91.7%. Only 4 out of 30 were promoted with support below 80%.
- The median 'survival time' from RfA to desysopping was 18 months; the mean was 23 months. The two RfAs with the lowest support (Ryulong, with 69.4%, and Carnildo's request for resysopping after his first desysop, with 61.2%) had longer-than-average tenures; Ryulong was desysopped after 28 months, and Carnildo's second term lasted 70 months. There was no correlation between number of supporting votes and 'survival time'. There was a rather weak negative correlation between support percentage and survival time (even with Carnildo's data point dropped), but both plots had a lot of scatter.
- I'm afraid that I don't want to go to the trouble of making sure the sheet is fully stripped of metadata (and I definitely don't have time to do it properly this week) so I won't be uploading the raw data or plots. The information can be readily collected from WP:RFDA. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:19, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- That is interesting. That does indicate also that those with close margins, that is those that had a substantial number of opposes but still got the bit, aren't necessarily apt to let the community down. Kumioko (talk) 01:47, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- A negative correlation between support percentage and survival time? Not surprising to me at all. I saw numerous times how sysops in ru.wikipedia promoted slightly above the margin retained a cautious behaviour for years. And how sysops promoted by an overwhelming majority entered I-am-a-trusted-person-and-know-what-I-am-doing rampage. The only difference is that here the latter are ultimately desysopped, whereas in ru.wikipedia most of them persist. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:20, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- When I said "rather weak", I'm talking about an r2 of 0.08. It's very weak. I really wouldn't go trying to read anything into that. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:57, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- For a sample N = 31 and r = -0.28 (equivalent to r2 = 0.08), the p-value on a single-sided test of significance is p = 0.064... in other words, there is no statistically significant difference between the observed correlation and no correlation at all. EdChem (talk) 13:27, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- And even if it were statistically highly significant, a correlation of 0.28 is very marginal, in my view. As it's not statistically significant there's just nothing to see here. Kim Dent-Brown (Talk) 13:50, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- For a sample N = 31 and r = -0.28 (equivalent to r2 = 0.08), the p-value on a single-sided test of significance is p = 0.064... in other words, there is no statistically significant difference between the observed correlation and no correlation at all. EdChem (talk) 13:27, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- When I said "rather weak", I'm talking about an r2 of 0.08. It's very weak. I really wouldn't go trying to read anything into that. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:57, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
If one is doing such a statistical list, the 40 or so administrators who decided to desysop themselves during a RFC or ArbCom case, or to avoid scrutiny should be included as well like INeverCry to mention a recent example. Outside of my last RFA (which took a few bloodbaths), the last successful resysopping of an administrator who was either desysopped by ArbCom, recalled, or desysopped themselves under ArbCom/RFC scrutiny was in May 2011, who are HJ Mitchell who still has his tools and SarekofVulcan who desysopped himself during a ArbCom case earlier this year, a 21 month span between those two and mine. Secret account 20:43, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- It should be noted that generally the only way to get the tools again once they have been removed is to do a name change and wait. As was said above Wiki never forgets or forgives so the only way to change that is to change your name and eventually enough time will pass that people will let it go. Kumioko (talk) 20:48, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
- HJ Mitchell's reconfirmation RFA is not a useful data point. The only controversy surrounding his desysop and the subsequent RFA was objections to the fact he chose to resign his tools at all. Monty845 01:56, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
- re the "Wiki never forgets, wiki never forgives" meme, I think we should remember that the opposite pretty much applies at RFA. The record here is that the community collectively will forgive pretty much anything given what in the real world would be considered a rather short period of time. In the real world if I got eleven points on my license next month then for the following 35 months I would be 1 point away from losing my license. On wiki I doubt there is a single active editor who couldn't make admin in half that time. Yes there are some where it would take some big changes, and maybe two attempts over the next 18 months. But in reality if you can't convince the community that a problem from more than a year ago is still a valid concern than the oppose section can be a very lonely place. Perversely if you do go through a name change then winning RFA over can take longer. But RFA is an absolute sucker for people who can demonstrate that they have learned much since their long distant RFA/scandal/desysop, and that is one of the few things I like about it. ϢereSpielChequers 14:43, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- That is not what I have seen...and experienced. For me it appears that Wiki has the memory of an elephant. Kumioko (talk) 14:49, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I guess it is possible that I've missed the odd exception, but in my experience the community is very forgiving of old issues. Can you quote an example where an RFA failed because of issues that were 24 months stale at the time of the RFA? ϢereSpielChequers 20:03, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- Steven Zhang—who I very much respect—had to withdraw his RfA because of something that happened about 40 months earlier. I think there were a couple more, but Steven's sticks in my mind becuase he was very upfront about it, but the community would still not forgive and forget even after all that time. 64.40.54.46 (talk) 02:26, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Hi all, I was notified about the discussion here. My RFA was tough, but I wouldn't put it solely down to what happened five years ago. I had minimal article contributions back then to non-pop culture articles, and received some opposition over this, as well as the fact the RFA was submitted after a 6 mth return to editing. I understand the importance of article contributions, and occasionally do so but feel it is not my strong area and feel that working on things I am skilled at is a better utilisation of my time. This is the reason I am unlikely to run again, but I do appreciate the kind sentiment by the above user and others who have contacted me. Regards, Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 03:30, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Steven Zhang—who I very much respect—had to withdraw his RfA because of something that happened about 40 months earlier. I think there were a couple more, but Steven's sticks in my mind becuase he was very upfront about it, but the community would still not forgive and forget even after all that time. 64.40.54.46 (talk) 02:26, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- I guess it is possible that I've missed the odd exception, but in my experience the community is very forgiving of old issues. Can you quote an example where an RFA failed because of issues that were 24 months stale at the time of the RFA? ϢereSpielChequers 20:03, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- That is not what I have seen...and experienced. For me it appears that Wiki has the memory of an elephant. Kumioko (talk) 14:49, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
Σ's RfA failed due to events outside of Wikipedia. Nominated by no less than four experienced admins who then came under fire for not knowing about it, though how they were supposed to know about is anybody's guess. Steven would almost certainly pass if he ran again now, and it's a shame that he's decided otherwise. I could very much understand if the RfA process were the real reason why he is reluctant to give it another try. Kevin's RfA was withdrawn before I had a chance to comment there. The oppose !votes were not all for the same reason, but there were some less appropriate ones amongst them. I've often considered my own RfA to be one of the nastiest and I was even advised offline by several people to withdraw. I'm glad I was at least 'obtuse' enough to stick it out, but it's not really so recent anymore. Running multiple times has its drawbacks although some are successful even at the 7th attempt (although they may not remain in office very long).
Looking back over these RfAs (as I often do) it's interesting to see how the core of regular voters has changed with time, and that a large number of voters are always a transient pool of rare contributors to the process. Looking back at the archives of this talk page also appears to demonstrate that some people have lost interest in even talking about RfA, while some still plod along in the hope of getting things improved. Some fairly recent Arbcom decisions and desysops seem to have stabilised the system somewhat, but it's those who rarely contribute to it or talk about it who need to be made more aware aware of the reasons why so few editors are now prepared to run for office and perhaps some should be advised that they need more experience before actually voting. Like the voters who come and go, so also do trends in oppose rationales. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:15, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Well, it really is worry about the RFA process. Last RFA was pretty difficult for me, so I'm not overly keen to go through that again. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 13:00, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Unfortunately a lot of people see how the RFA's go down and it deters them from trying at all...or worse they leave if they don't get the tools. At least you tried and stayed when you didn't get it, kudos for that. Kumioko (talk) 13:11, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Just for the record, I recently turned down a nomination offer for the same two reasons Steve cites above: insufficient content editing and my emotional reaction to my prior experience, whether deserved or undeserved, at RFA. I believe my experience in dispute resolution clearly indicates that I know how to do content, even if I don't do it much, but I'm pretty certain that argument's not going to have much weight at RFA. I won't go through that pecked-to-death-by-ducks experience again unless I can be virtually certain that it will succeed and unless I either jump on the content creation train or something changes here, that's not going to happen. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 13:57, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Unfortunately a lot of people see how the RFA's go down and it deters them from trying at all...or worse they leave if they don't get the tools. At least you tried and stayed when you didn't get it, kudos for that. Kumioko (talk) 13:11, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Solid self-assessment is the best policy to adopt when considering running. We can only offer so much help, such as at WP:Advice for RfA candidates for example, and that's already extremely comprehensive. Having the confidence of being reasonably sure to pass isn't enough, one needs to be physically sure and know that one has no skellies in the cupboard and know who the enemies are that will turn up. I knew who would creep out of the woodwork to attack me at my RfA, but I didn't know that they were going to put up such a disgusting performance, fortunately they have long since been desysoped. On the other hand, some innocently (or perhaps not so naïvely) took comments of mine totally out of context and presented me as a child hater, which of course got a bunch of pile-ons. Then there was the old crowd of anti-adminship regulars who fortunately appear to have found new hobbies. RfA isn't quite so bad as it was, but potential candidates still need convincing. 14:16, 22 August 2013 (UTC)~~
!votes and adminship
I've noticed that candidates' Articles for Deletion "accuracy" ratings have been mentioned by RfA !voters. I'm wondering whether there's really any reason to judge a candidate's aptitude for adminship based on how their AfD stances have corresponded to the general consensus. There's a big difference between what an AfD !voter does and what an AfD closer does - the !voter is giving an argument based on WP policies, and the closing admin is determining consensus. !voters should not be voting based on consensus. So, let's say an RfA candidate has 69% AfD correspondence to consensus. Is it really appropriate to cite this in opposing him or her? What if the other 31% of the candidate's AfD comments are rooted in WP policy, but just didn't meet consensus? Should that really be a reason to oppose the candidate? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated, as I don't know if RfA will benefit from such rationales. —Theodore! (talk) (contribs) 00:42, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- In my mind, this is ridiculous. "Accuracy" presupposes that the minority are in the wrong: the whole reason we have discussions is that most situations aren't clear-cut, meaning that neither side is more right or wrong than the other. All that this stat really says is that consensus disagreed with you; there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you don't make a big deal of it. Moreover, the fact that people care about this kind of thing can lead to pile-ons. Let's say you run for administrator and are afraid that you have too low of an accuracy rate: you can simply go around and vote with the majority in debates that are close to WP:SNOWing, and your accuracy rate will increase. Doing such a thing already isn't particularly helpful, but you're gaming the system by doing something unhelpful to make yourself look better. Nyttend (talk) 01:05, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- That concerns me, as well. I think that a well-thought-out "keep" in a discussion resulting in "delete" looks better than "delete" in an obvious case, where consensus has already been established. —Theodore! (talk) (contribs) 01:12, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I should have said two other things. (1) Consensus disagreeing with you should be seen as a bad thing if and only if you're making bad arguments, e.g. ILIKEIT — but that's because people who make such arguments aren't likely to be good administrators. (2) In my mind, improving your accuracy rate by gaming the system is a substantial reason to oppose a nomination, rather than to support it. Nyttend (talk) 01:20, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- That concerns me, as well. I think that a well-thought-out "keep" in a discussion resulting in "delete" looks better than "delete" in an obvious case, where consensus has already been established. —Theodore! (talk) (contribs) 01:12, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- This looks to me like this tool is being misused, just like edit count can be misused. People should care enough to dig into why a user is missing the consensus some percentage of the time. Maybe he's really missing out on understand a core guideline and !voting delete because of it, and so probably shouldn't be given the tools. Maybe he's working in an area where people pop out of the woodwork to keep an article when in fact those articles should be deleted according to our policies, and so he should perhaps be given the tools for understanding policy or guideline as those apply in his topic area. --Izno (talk) 01:33, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I'm not arguing against the tool, but against this use of it. Nyttend (talk) 01:49, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- The problem is that a lot of editors base their votes on the tangible things like how many edits someone has or what their AFD percentage is rather than on the intangible things. Its just one more example in my opinion why the RFA process and the assignment of the tools needs to be completely redesigned. Not that I think that has any chance at ever happening, but that's what needs to happen. Kumioko (talk) 02:02, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- Nyttend: Yup. I'm affirming your points. :) --Izno (talk) 15:11, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I'm not arguing against the tool, but against this use of it. Nyttend (talk) 01:49, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
"Oppose: Candidate disagrees with consensus 50% of the time." is a terrible reason to oppose an RFA, and at least once I said as much when I saw it. However, "Oppose: Candidate disagrees with consensus 50% of the time, and when i looked into examples X, Y, Z, he gives awful explanations that suggest he misunderstands policy." is totally OK. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:29, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- Fully agree; that's what I meant by my (1) thing, because it shows that you don't understand or don't care about relevant policies and guidelines, so you're unlikely to be a good admin. Nyttend (talk) 02:34, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
Recent nominations
What if we had a "Recently closed RFAs" box on the top of the page? Might be helpful to those of us who only occasionally come around: whenever I vote in a close RFA, I'm often left wondering what happened, so I have to do a bunch of digging to find what would easily be discovered if we had a "Recently closed" box. Nyttend (talk) 00:59, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- Sad to say, I would find this useful too. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:07, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I also support this. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:02, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I have created this: Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Recently. Thoughts? — ΛΧΣ21 02:22, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- The box looks fabulous, but methinks it leaves a tad too much whitespace on the left side. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 02:35, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I was thinking of suggesting that we provide links to the five most recent RFAs, so I'm glad you designed it that way. Since RFAs sometimes don't happen for a chunk of time, while at other times there are lots of them, it's much better to have a standard length rather than including all the RFAs that were closed in a certain period of time. What if we also included the most recent RFB? Nyttend (talk) 02:37, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I think that it will take us back to 2011 :) And I think that then i should change the name from Recently closed RfXs to Latest RfXs or something. Thoughts? — ΛΧΣ21 02:41, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- Well Nyttend, maybe having another RfB would help solve the problem AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 02:50, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I have absolutely no desire to be a bureaucrat; just see how often I close discussions such as XFDs :-) Our most recent failed RFB was Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Apteva, almost a year ago, while we've had two successful ones this year: Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Addshore was in June. You already included a spot for RFBs, leaving it empty because of "No recent nominations", not because it would make the page name confusing. Nyttend (talk) 02:53, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) People sometimes think that RfB is even worse than RfA. The numbers, sparse as they may be, don't back that up. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 03:00, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Ok, I finished the design, I think. I added a light green background to the successful ones and some bolded here and there. Comments are very welcomed. — ΛΧΣ21 02:54, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I have absolutely no desire to be a bureaucrat; just see how often I close discussions such as XFDs :-) Our most recent failed RFB was Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Apteva, almost a year ago, while we've had two successful ones this year: Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Addshore was in June. You already included a spot for RFBs, leaving it empty because of "No recent nominations", not because it would make the page name confusing. Nyttend (talk) 02:53, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- Well Nyttend, maybe having another RfB would help solve the problem AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 02:50, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I think that it will take us back to 2011 :) And I think that then i should change the name from Recently closed RfXs to Latest RfXs or something. Thoughts? — ΛΧΣ21 02:41, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I was thinking of suggesting that we provide links to the five most recent RFAs, so I'm glad you designed it that way. Since RFAs sometimes don't happen for a chunk of time, while at other times there are lots of them, it's much better to have a standard length rather than including all the RFAs that were closed in a certain period of time. What if we also included the most recent RFB? Nyttend (talk) 02:37, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- The box looks fabulous, but methinks it leaves a tad too much whitespace on the left side. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 02:35, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- While it's nice to be bold, this needs to be removed and moved to user space. You simply cannot leave a massive blank space on top of the talk page and expect it's going to be okay - it's incredibly distracting. Ideally it should also be collapsible and modeled after Navbox - see my example here. Alex ShihTalk 05:17, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- Your design is too complicated, though. We need a simpler one like the one I did. However, as several users have approved the addition, I think that it is out of my hands now. Cheers. — ΛΧΣ21 05:36, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I was also bold. Now there is less white space :) Someguy1221 (talk) 10:23, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- It does look a bit of a mess currently. I'm also not sure it's a vital addition given we have both lists chronologically sorted just a few pixels above Jebus989✰ 12:56, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- Your design is too complicated, though. We need a simpler one like the one I did. However, as several users have approved the addition, I think that it is out of my hands now. Cheers. — ΛΧΣ21 05:36, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- What's the date? "Date opened"?? "Date closed"?? "Date of last action"?? "Date with destiny"?? Just saying "date" means little without slightly more context ES&L 13:00, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- I tweaked some stuff, mostly to make sure the template is accessible (headers in the middle of a table are not). I have no opinion on how many should be added (whether, 5, 10, or whatnot), but I see no reason why we should separate out RFBs from the set of RFAs, so long as there is a type column of some sort differentiating the two. I realize in this case it means RFBs fall off the current list, but I don't see that as a loss. --Izno (talk) 15:33, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
- Can we define "recent"? It seems silly to have an RfB that is more than a year old on there. Anything more than four weeks old I don't think really needs to be listed in a "recent RfX" table. (yes, I realize the table says "latest", not "recent") EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:58, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
User who began editing in 2009 running for RFA
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This is a user conduct issue and is being dealt with on that user's talk page.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:20, 20 August 2013 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Since when it is forbidden to raise concerns that recently minted editors may be reincarnations of banned users or other undesirables, to the point where such comments are permitted to be redacted? I know from personal experience that ANYTHING GOES at RFA, even blatant lies. So why is the mere suspicion of impropriety sufficient to have the comment redacted AND and only-warning that I will be blocked if I do more? Chutznik (talk) 20:13, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
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Self noms at RfA
Candidate | First RfA | Tally | % | Year | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
S | O | N | ||||
Grandiose | Yes | 82 | 11 | 6 | 88 | 2013 |
Jason Quinn | No (second) | 138 | 29 | 16 | 82 | |
Scottywong | No (second) | 89 | 4 | 11 | 95 | 2012 |
Guerillero | Yes | 59 | 14 | 6 | 80 | 2011 |
Rannpháirtí anaithnid | No (second) | 71 | 10 | 4 | 87 | |
Tyrol5 | Yes | 65 | 0 | 0 | 100 | |
Worm That Turned | Yes | 121 | 3 | 2 | 97 | |
TParis | No (second) | 48 | 4 | 4 | 92 | |
Jimp | Yes | 75 | 4 | 0 | 94 | |
Sadads | Yes | 97 | 2 | 3 | 97 | |
Catfish Jim and the soapdish | Yes | 109 | 2 | 1 | 98 | |
RHM22 | Yes | 78 | 16 | 8 | 82 | |
Feezo | Yes | 47 | 1 | 6 | 97 | |
JaGa | Yes | 83 | 3 | 0 | 96 | |
Neelix | Yes | 69 | 14 | 12 | 83 | |
Boing! said Zebedee | Yes | 160 | 1 | 0 | 99 | |
ErrantX | Yes | 85 | 2 | 4 | 97 | |
Rami R | No (second) | 66 | 12 | 8 | 84 | |
ErikHaugen | Yes | 82 | 27 | 1 | 75 | |
Smartse | Yes | 129 | 0 | 1 | 100 | |
Gimme danger | Yes | 77 | 11 | 6 | 87 |
Given Grandiose's soon-to-be-successful RfA, I decided to look back at the previous successful self-noms to do some comparisons. I was pretty impressed at what I got. In the table ablove, I could see that 2012 and 2013 have only had one successful self-nom (2013 will have two when the current RfA closes), but 2011 had 18! Of those 18, only three weren't first runs. 2012 and 2013 have not had first-run self-noms until Grandiose.
Another interesting thing is that most of the self-noms that pass, do so with a high percentage of support. From the 20 RfAs compiled above, only one had a support rate below 80% (ErikHaugen), and only two had more than 20 opposes (Jason Quinn and ErikHaugen). Also, only two self-noms have received 100% support (Smartse and Tyrol5) and only one has received more than 150 support votes (Boing! said Zebedee). Another note is that from those above, only Boing! said Zebedee has ceased to be a sysop (although he resigned voluntarily). Coincidentally, he's the one with the most supports :)
Apart from that, if we compare with non-self noms. Successful self-noms in 2011 represented 34% of all successful candidacies. This saw a significant change in 2012, when only 3% of all successful candidates were self-noms (e.g. one from 28). In 2013, the number sits at 8,3% (including Grandiose's RfA). Now, a good question is: what happened to self-noms between 2011 and 2012 and why community now prefers candidates to be nominated. Cheers. — ΛΧΣ21 01:40, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- Personally I don't see any problem with self nom's and always thought it was a pretty poor reason to oppose. There should be nothing wrong with someone wanting to do more to help the project but some feel they are just hat collecting or some other dumb assumption. Aside from that and I have said it many times before. The current process for promoting sysops is crap, but it seems were stuck with it. The way the toolset is grouped is inefficient to the project and does more harm than good by unnecessarily restricting the number of people that can do certain tasks. The fact is that the vaste majority of editors who last more than a few weeks are here to help the project and if they haven't been blocked, then they are probably useful. But we continue to harbor these feelings of Assumption of bad faith by assuming that if they suddenly have access to the toolset they'll turn into vandals. Its complete horseshit and everyone knows it. But, because it would cause a lot of people to lose their feelings of being in control and having power, were stuck with this garbage broken process that is hopelessly broken and will never be fixed. Kumioko (talk) 01:59, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I think that the problem is that enwiki's RfA is somehow plagued by nitpickyness and maybe some wikipolitical matters. I sometimes see that what's important before running is not what you've done, but how popular you are and how many users you've pissed off. On other projects, for example, I became an admin and what was important was my tenure and my track history on that project. Even If I didn't like the user, if he has shown that he could use the tools properly, he has my support. That's something that doesn't happen here, and maybe that's the main problem of our process. — ΛΧΣ21 02:10, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- The stats are very interesting, but probably only as stats - there's probably no concrete conclusions to be drawn from them because the pool of !voters is constantly in flux. Some RfA with very strong noms from highly respected users still fail, while I don't believe there is much to be gleaned from a concept that users would tend to systematically opppose self noms - although there have been (just a few) blatant oppose !votes in the past because the candidate self-nominated. Let's not also forget that some of the self-noms were not made without gathering some opinion beforehand from experienced users (not to be confused with canvassing). If any conclusions can be drawn, unsuccessful self-noms are most likely due to being too inexperienced or too ill prepared anyway while those that pass often do with the most flying of colours because they are already well known, well established users. Kumioko (I do understand, I do, I do, but there's nowt I can do about it) has a thing against the system - as he doesn't cease to remind us - because he has a clear need for the use of some of the tools but the community rejects the idea of him having them all - or his judgement for non-tool responsibilities - and rejects the idea of unbundling some of them.
- Probably not so much nitpicky, but it's certainly true that RfA is partly an un/popularity contest as a table in WP:RFA2011 shows a staggering number of one-off RfA !voters, of which closer examination would probably demonstrate that they are the ones who do little or no research, basing their vote instead on one good deed that was done to them, or a reprimand they received from the candidate. Those who do find the process nitpicky will get some of their answers from the editors who feel it's still too difficult to remove admins from office.
- I am very, very disappointed that Boing has practically retired and I'm at a loss to understand what went wrong. Perhaps I'll know the next time I meet him, but it will probably be kept confidential; I'm also saddened that Worm is going AWOL for a while, but I believe this is a RL issue, and some of the other high scorers haven't been very active since getting the bit. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:09, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- Your absolutely right Kudpung, I do have a problem with the system as it is. Part of my problem is the fact that if you do something wrong you can't get the tools but once you do get the tools, you can pretty much do whatever and to whomever you want without losing them. There are at least a dozen admins running around that should have the tools removed but there are always some clowns arguing that they should get another chance. Many admins have this huge toolset and never use them, a lot only use one or 2 of the tools and never the others. But there all bundled together, its an all or none package and its ridiculous. Your also right I bring it up a lot, every chance I get because that's the only way to improve the system, to keep bringing it up until its fixed. The squeeky wheel gets the grease as they say. To be honest though, I am probably going to start pulling away myself in the next few weeks. I doubt I'll stop completely, but frankly if I'm not needed and there is no respect for my time, in making me spend 2 and 3 times more of it to accomplish a task, then I can find other users for it than this project. I am certain that others feel that way as well. If we can change the processes to make it easier for people to help and to participate without making them feel like we have no respect for their time and they can't be trusted, we'll start keeping more editors and well get a hell of a lot ore done. But again, as long as we keep being nay sayers, shooting down every suggestion and telling everyone that will never work and the WMF won't allow that, and we allow the admin cabalists to keep their power, and keep the editors in their place. Then the project loses so we can keep a few feeling as though they are the kings and queens. Kumioko (talk) 03:45, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I would still hesitate at tarring all admins with the same brush though. Those who are unfit for the post are very much in the minority, while some do make the occasional, forgivable mistake. However, I have a strong feeling that if more abuse is reported - strong evidence will be needed though - Arbcom will be pulling its socks up in the future. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:01, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I have seen at least 4 reported to Arbcom or other venues in the last 60 days. They all left unscathed. In fact, Arbcom refused a couple valid cases and sent them to RFC knowing that they are the only ones that can desysop for cause. So an RFC just for procedural sake is just plum stupid and a waste of time. And before I get beatup, yes, the Beauro's can desysop for certain reasons but I think general incompetence or for cause are not among them. With that said, another point I would like to clarify is that even though some lost the tools and I feel shouldn't be admins, that doesn't mean I don't trust them to have some of the tools. I may not trust them to Block or see deleted content, but I would still trust them to edit protected templates (generally) or pull more than 25000 articles into AWB. Those are just 2 of the ones I think should not be part of the toolset. Especially because so many people say that editing templates isn't administrative....it is if they are the only ones that can do it! Kumioko (talk) 11:59, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- Kumioko, rather than just sit there whining about "general incompetence" and apparently valid cases getting rejected by ArbCom, why not actually do something about it? GiantSnowman 13:19, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- Like what? Run for RFA? Start another RFC? Participate in another discussion? Try and provoke a response to fix it from the WMF? All have been done, many of these by me. I have participated in countless discussions and all have ended in failure. Mostly because there are enough admins or wanna be admins that view the toolset as a status symbol that they vote down any suggestion to protect that. I honestly don't care how we change it at this point, but change needs to happen and there have been a lot of good ideas. At this point we just need to try something and if it doesn't work we can adjust fire. If you want my opinion though we need to look at all of the tools that come with the toolset and if they are not specifically limited by the WMF (like blocking and visibility of deleted content) we need to split them out and make them more available. If people want to be able to Block/Unblock, Protect/Unprotect or view deleted content then they can apply for the tools. Kumioko (talk) 13:45, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- There seems to be the occasional misunderstanding that adminship is only about gaining a few extra tools. More difficult for some candidates to understand is that once an admin, they will be expected to act maturely and lead by example. Hence it doesn't always need a misuse of tools to get desysoped as recent Arbcom cases would demonstrate. That's perhaps what we need more of, as well of course those who are repeatedly too quick on the block and delete buttons. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:15, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- Like what? Run for RFA? Start another RFC? Participate in another discussion? Try and provoke a response to fix it from the WMF? All have been done, many of these by me. I have participated in countless discussions and all have ended in failure. Mostly because there are enough admins or wanna be admins that view the toolset as a status symbol that they vote down any suggestion to protect that. I honestly don't care how we change it at this point, but change needs to happen and there have been a lot of good ideas. At this point we just need to try something and if it doesn't work we can adjust fire. If you want my opinion though we need to look at all of the tools that come with the toolset and if they are not specifically limited by the WMF (like blocking and visibility of deleted content) we need to split them out and make them more available. If people want to be able to Block/Unblock, Protect/Unprotect or view deleted content then they can apply for the tools. Kumioko (talk) 13:45, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- Kumioko, rather than just sit there whining about "general incompetence" and apparently valid cases getting rejected by ArbCom, why not actually do something about it? GiantSnowman 13:19, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I have seen at least 4 reported to Arbcom or other venues in the last 60 days. They all left unscathed. In fact, Arbcom refused a couple valid cases and sent them to RFC knowing that they are the only ones that can desysop for cause. So an RFC just for procedural sake is just plum stupid and a waste of time. And before I get beatup, yes, the Beauro's can desysop for certain reasons but I think general incompetence or for cause are not among them. With that said, another point I would like to clarify is that even though some lost the tools and I feel shouldn't be admins, that doesn't mean I don't trust them to have some of the tools. I may not trust them to Block or see deleted content, but I would still trust them to edit protected templates (generally) or pull more than 25000 articles into AWB. Those are just 2 of the ones I think should not be part of the toolset. Especially because so many people say that editing templates isn't administrative....it is if they are the only ones that can do it! Kumioko (talk) 11:59, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I would still hesitate at tarring all admins with the same brush though. Those who are unfit for the post are very much in the minority, while some do make the occasional, forgivable mistake. However, I have a strong feeling that if more abuse is reported - strong evidence will be needed though - Arbcom will be pulling its socks up in the future. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:01, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- On the issue of self noms, I worry that the various warning messages that we now have for people creating an RFA may be excessive. In one sense it is good that we only rarely see insufficiently experienced candidates these days, when people fail it is usually because they are an experienced candidate who is perceived to have flaws. My fear is that in deterring people who would fail we are also deterring some who would succeed, especially potential self noms. ϢereSpielChequers 14:23, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I'm not 100% sure of that. I created that banner and it was put there by consensus and appears to be working as it should - but still doesn't deter all candidates who are almost certain to fail. It does contain links to important advice pages. I suppose we could try taking it off for a while and see what happens. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:50, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I don't dispute that it had consensus for implementation, or that it has been effective at dissuading some candidates from unsuccessful runs. My worry is that it could be the thing that has lost us most of our self noms. Rather than remove it how about an amendment to make it less offputting to self noms? ϢereSpielChequers 19:01, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I support this. — ΛΧΣ21 19:35, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I'll have a look at it and see about making it milder. However, as I said, I would be quite happy - as an experiment - to take it off completely for a while. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:44, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- Done: Commented out stophand sign. Minor text changes. Removed 2nd person pronouns and mention of self-nom. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:57, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I am ok with that suggestion too. We can always add it back. What's the worst that can happen. A bunch of people applying? Kumioko (talk) 23:58, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- @Kudpung: Template:Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship should also be updated :) — ΛΧΣ21 00:08, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- I don't immediately see how that applies. Maybe your link was to the wrong template. Suggestions? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:23, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- It appears when you try to create a new RfA nomination; . — ΛΧΣ21 00:26, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks. Done. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:36, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- It appears when you try to create a new RfA nomination; . — ΛΧΣ21 00:26, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- I don't immediately see how that applies. Maybe your link was to the wrong template. Suggestions? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:23, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- @Kudpung: Template:Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship should also be updated :) — ΛΧΣ21 00:08, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- I am ok with that suggestion too. We can always add it back. What's the worst that can happen. A bunch of people applying? Kumioko (talk) 23:58, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I support this. — ΛΧΣ21 19:35, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I don't dispute that it had consensus for implementation, or that it has been effective at dissuading some candidates from unsuccessful runs. My worry is that it could be the thing that has lost us most of our self noms. Rather than remove it how about an amendment to make it less offputting to self noms? ϢereSpielChequers 19:01, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
- I'm not 100% sure of that. I created that banner and it was put there by consensus and appears to be working as it should - but still doesn't deter all candidates who are almost certain to fail. It does contain links to important advice pages. I suppose we could try taking it off for a while and see what happens. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:50, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
Not enough crats?
The current RfA has stayed open for almost 18 hours past the end date despite a fairly clear consensus. I know I've beaten this drum repeatedly in the past, but could it be that we've reached a point where we simply don't have enough crats? Is this a one-time fluke or a sign of further things to come? AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 16:28, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Would more crats be better? Sure, it means less pressure for those already in that position. Do we need more crats? Not urgently. Will we get more crats? Probably no, purely because the nature of work that admins do means you are going to piss off a lot of people, people who will then in turn !vote against you at your RFB. GiantSnowman 16:36, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) A brief examination shows that WP:CHU is quite backlogged. It also took over a day for my username change to be carried out, so I think the answer is yes, there are either not enough bureaucrats or that the bureaucrats are mainly focusing on administrative tasks, in which case more bureaucrats would also be necessary. — SamX‧☎‧✎‧S 16:38, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Seven days are a minimum requirement, not an end timestamp.—cyberpower ChatOnline 16:38, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- CHU backlog won't matter soon; crats won't be doing renames. With so few RfAs it seems bizarre to be suggesting more crats are needed to close them - there's probably more work to do in de-sysoping inactive admins that in creating new ones QuiteUnusual (talk) 16:58, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- And I suspect that is only going to get worse if we can't do something to turn the RFA process around or reengineer how the rights are given. Kumioko (talk) 17:34, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- I would stand for 'crat, except that I've been an admin too long - long enough to raise the ire of many by closing contentious discussions, participating in contentious discussions, or initiating what turned out to be contentious discussion. Perhaps, for the umpteenth time, we should be considering a mid-level status with limited admin powers and a lower threshold of entry. bd2412 T 17:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Maybe there could be a user group that has the ability to rename users without the additional 'crat toolset, since CHU is often highly backlogged, and renaming isn't very controversial, as far as I can tell. I couldn't find any information on whatever changes are going to happen to the renaming process, however. — SamX‧☎‧✎‧S 18:02, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- And I suspect that is only going to get worse if we can't do something to turn the RFA process around or reengineer how the rights are given. Kumioko (talk) 17:34, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
There are plenty of bureaucrats around. I am quite active, although it's not always evident from my contributions as I do tons of stuff behind the scenes. As is the case with many bureaucrat duties, I stop checking frequently since there are other bureaucrats handling matters much more speedily than I could. I'll try to make an effort to check the open RfAs more often to see if any need to be closed. Perhaps we should consider a bot that emails the bureaucrats (or, better, any bureaucrat that opts in to the service) when an RfA is due to be closed. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 18:12, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- AutomaticStrikeout likes this 18:15, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- Having it drop a line to the 'crat mailing list would be kinda cool. Maybe have it send after the customary six-hour "don't bother the 'crats yet" timeframe. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:48, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
- There aren't too few crats, there are too many, with nothing much to do to keep their interest piqued. I propose pimping them out to other WMF projects for some badly needed cash for en.wiki admins to share (suck it, non-admins, it's all mine MINE MINE). --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Withdraw RFA
Someone can close my RFA. No reason to waste more time on a lost cause. Kumioko (talk) 03:15, 27 August 2013 (UTC)